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Veteran filmmaker Todd Haynes will head the competition jury at the 2025 Berlin Film Festival.

The announcement was made this morning by the festival. In a statement, Berlinale director Tricia Tuttle described Haynes as a “dazzlingly gifted writer and director.”

“His body of work is at once stylistically versatile but also unmistakably his,” Tuttle said. “Ever since his debut feature Poison won the Teddy Award in 1991, the Berlinale has followed and loved his filmmaking, and we are overjoyed to have him join the festival as the President of the International Jury for our 75th edition.”

One of the pioneering voices of 90’s American cinema independent cinema, Haynes made his feature with Poison, an experimental sci-fi flick starring Edith Meeks, Larry Maxwell, Susan Gayle Norman, Scott Renderer, and James Lyons. The film won the queer film prize at the Berlinale, in 1991, and won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

Todd Haynes' films cover a range of rich themes and offer unique perspectives, making him an exciting and versatile director. While not every one of his films is memorable, each one showcases Haynes' potential and his ability to explore complexity within narratives. Haynes' latest film, May December, tackles uncomfortable themes of power and exploitation, with a stellar cast that delivers nuanced performances. The film allows audiences to sit with the feelings it stirs up, making it a top-notch exploration of the subject matter.

Before becoming an acclaimed feature film director, Todd Haynes started off as a screenwriter and short film director, and with so many features now under his belt, including May December, the quality of Haynes’ films has been shown to differ. Beginning his film career back in 1978 with the short film The Suicide, Haynes began making a name for himself in Hollywood. But it wasn’t until 1991 that...

Who are those eternal dream girls of summer? Now in 4K . . . Sofia Coppola’s first feature is a head-swirling poetic essay about adolescent angst and tragic self-annihilation. Some families are balanced, others are dysfunctional and some are just plain toxic. Ms. Coppola sticks close to the source book, looking for visuals to express author Jeffrey Eugenides’ solution-challenged mystery, narrated by a composite group of teenaged boys.

The Virgin Suicides 4K

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 920

1999 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 97 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date July 5, 2022 / 49.95

Starring: Kirsten Dunst, A. J. Cook, Hanna Hall, Leslie Hayman, Chelse Swain, James Woods, Kathleen Turner, Josh Hartnett, Michael Paré, Scott Glenn, Danny DeVito, Giovanni Ribisi.

Cinematography: Ed Lachman

Film Editor: Melissa Kent, James Lyons

Original Music: Air

From the novel by Jeffrey Eugenides

Produced by Francis Ford Coppola, Julie Costanzo, Dan Halsted, Chris Hanley

Written and Directed by Sofia Coppola...

"It's easy to enjoy Raffaello Matarazzo's melodramas for the campy excess of their acting and story lines," blogs Dave Kehr, "but it's more productive to take them seriously, I think — to see how cleanly and elegantly Matarazzo presents this bezerko material, with a visual style that reminded Jacques Lourcelles of Lang, Dreyer and Mizoguchi, and how perfectly engineered his narratives are, with every outlandish episode incorporated into a serene, symmetrical structure. The new Matarazzo box set (my New York Times review is here) from Criterion's budget Eclipse line contains four of Matarazzo's seven films with the towering star couple Amedeo Nazzari and Yvonne Sanson (literally — Matarazzo's mise-en-scene somehow makes them seem larger, both physically and emotionally, than any of the other characters on the screen), all subtitled in English for the first time: Chains (1949) [image above], Tormento (1950), Nobody's Children (1952) and The White Angel (1955)."

"Though immensely popular, the films were dismissed by...

Velvet Goldmine

Directed by Todd Haynes

Screenplay by James Lyons & Todd Haynes

USA, 1998

A mishmash of Citizen Kane, Ziggy Stardust-era David Bowie, Oscar Wilde and with a little bit of The Wall thrown in for good measure, Velvet Goldmine is science-fiction, fantasy, biopic and time capsule wrapped into one.

Taking its non-chronological structure directly from Kane, Christian Bale plays reporter Arthur Stuart, charged with investigating the whereabouts of glam-rocker Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) who infamously staged his own suicide ten years ago and then disappeared from public view.

As with Kane, Stuart becomes a noir investigator of sorts, tracking down the likes of Mandy Slade (Toni Collette), Brian Slade’s ex-wife, and Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor), an Iggy Pop-inspired rock-god.

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What really sets Goldmine apart from Kane structurally is Stuart’s hidden past – his own involvement in the glam-rock era – which was, and still is, a source of shame.

• Many people were wondering why Todd Haynes' I'm not There wasn't announced as part of Cannes' selections - my guess is that sometimes personal matters take over. Long-time film editor to Haynes, James Lyons passed away this week. This weekend I suggest renting not Todd Haynes's best film (Safe) but perhaps James Lyons' best work - Far From Heaven. Lyons was a good friend to Haynes and many others in the Killer Films gang - and will be sorely missed....

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Greg Kinnear and Hope Davis have joined Pierce Brosnan in the black comedy Matador for writer-director Richard Shepard. Set to start shooting next month in Mexico City, Matador centers on an unlikely friendship between a globe-trotting assassin (Brosnan) and a gullible young suburban couple from Denver (Kinnear, Davis). Financed by Stratus Film Co., Matador is being produced by Irish DreamTime partners Brosnan and Beau St. Clair along with Furst Films' Sean Furst and Bryan Furst. Stratus partners Bob Yari and Mark Gordon will receive executive producer credit. "We were knocked out when we read this script," Yari and Gordon said. "We expect this movie to have great commercial appeal throughout the world." Added Sean Furst: "It is rare to land your dream cast. The fact that it happened is a testament to the strength of this material, the tenacity of Stratus and the collective passion behind the project." David Tattersall is the director of photography, with Jim Lyons set as the film editor. Catherine Thomas will handle costume design, with production design by Robert Pearson. Kinnear is repped by CAA. Davis is repped by UTA and manager Perri Kipperman at LMRK.