News

Noch bis Mitte Dezember laufen die Dreharbeiten zur „Tatort“-Doppelfolge „Unter Freunden / Unter Feinden“ mit Almila Bagriacik und Karoline Schuch in den Hauptrollen als neues Kieler-Ermittlerteam.

Regisseur Lars Kraume mit Almila Bagriacik (li.) und Karoline Schuch am Set des „Tatort: Unter Freunden/Unter Feinden“ (Credit: Ndr/Thorsten Jander)

Noch bis Mitte Dezember inszeniert Lars Kraume nach Drehbüchern, die er zusammen mit Katharina Adler, Rudi Gaul und Patrick Brunken geschrieben hat, in Kiel und anderen Orten Schleswig-Holsteins sowie in Hamburg die „Tatort“-Doppelfolge „Unter Freunden / Unter Feinden“, in denen Karoline Schuch nach dem Ausstieg von Axel Milberg als Kommissar Klaus Borowski an der Seite von Hauptkommissarin Mila Sahin (Almila Bagriacik) ihr Debüt als Polizeipsychologin Elli Krieger gibt. Lars Kraume hatte auch schon bei letzten Milberg-„Tatort: Borowski und das Haupt der Medusa“, der im kommenden Jahr im Ersten und in der Ard Mediathek zu sehen sein wird, Regie geführt.

In ihrem...

In ihrem ersten Jahr als Leiterin der Sektion „Televisionen“ beim Filmfest Hamburg hat sich Bettina Schoeller Bouju viel Prominenz eingeladen, darunter David Schalkos Projekt „Warum ich?“ oder Sonja Heiss‘ „Deadlines“. Matthias Glasners Serienprojekt „Informant“ wird als Special Presentation in der Elbphilharmonie gezeigt.

Charly Hübner in „Warum ich?“ (Credit: Superfilm Filmproductions GmbH)

Die neue Leiterin der Filmfest-Hamburg-Sektion „Televisionen“, Bettina Schoeller Bouju, hat ihr erstes Programm vorgelegt. Die Reihe eröffnet mit Lars Beckers neuestem Film „Die Polizistin und die Sprache des Todes“. Unter den zwölf kuratierten Fernsehfilmen und TV-Serien plus die außer Konkurrenz gezeigten Werke befinden sich aber auch Matthias Glasners Serienprojekt „Informant – Angst über der Stadt“ mit Jürgen Vogel in der Hauptrolle (als Special Presentation in der Elbphilharmonie), David Schalkos neuestes Projekt „Warum ich?“ mit Charly Hübner und die dritte „Deadlines“-Staffel, bei der Sonja Heiss Regie führte.

„Die ausgewählten Filme und Serien bieten ein breites Spektrum all dessen, was Fernsehen heute sein kann.

The 73rd Berlin International Film Festival came to a close this past weekend, and despite speculation that Sundance import “Past Lives” or Lila Avilés’ “Tótem” would take the Golden Bear, the jury, led this year by Kristen Stewart, awarded it to the French documentary “On the Adamant.” Directed by Nicolas Philibert, the movie follows operations at the Parisian Centre de jour l’Adamant, a floating medical facility on the Seine that offers its patients innovative forms of art therapy.

Jordan Mintzer (The Hollywood Reporter) writes, “While documenting the daily routine of a small clinic that most Parisians walk by without ever noticing, ‘On the Adamant’ ultimately becomes a moving testament to what people are capable of, if they could just find the right place to do it.” Guy Lodge (Variety) compares the film to Philibert’s “To Be and To Have,” which is set inside a single-room schoolhouse in rural France,...

The gender-neutral acting prize was won by Spain’s Sofía Otero for ’20,000 Species of Bees’.

Nicolas Philibert’s documentary On The Adamant, about a floating care centre in Paris, was awarded Golden Bear for best film at the Berlin International Film Festival tonight (February 25).

The film, which is being handled internationally by Les Films du Losange, is the fourth documentary to take top honours at the Berlinale.

German films found particular favour with the jury, presided over by Kristen Stewart, with no less than three of the Bear statuettes going to local productions: the Silver Bear Grand Jury award for Christian Petzold’s Afire,...

The documentary “On the Adamant” has been named the best film of the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival, Berlin organizers announced on Saturday.

The film from director Nicolas Philibert follows life in a daycare center located on the Seine in Paris for adults with mental disorders. It is the first documentary to win the festival’s top prize since “Fire at Sea” in 2016.

German director Christian Petzold won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize, essentially the runner-up award, for his drama “Afire,” while Philippe Garrel won the directing award for “The Plough.” The gender-neutral acting prizes went to Sofia Otero for “20,000 Species of Bees” in the leading performance category and Thea Ehre for “Till the End of the Night” in the supporting category.

The jury president was actress Kristen Stewart. The other jurors were actress Goldshifteh Farahani, directors Valeska Grisebach, Radu Jude and Carla Simón and Johnnie To and casting director Francine Maisler.

After the misery of the 2022 Berlin Film Festival, held toward the tail-end of the pandemic and with strict social distancing and Covid testing regulations still in place, it was back to normal at this year’s 73rd edition.

Festivalgoers were so pleased to return to a proper, physical event that they were remarkably tolerant toward a competition programme that was very patchy, at least by comparison with those found in rival events like Cannes and Venice.

The Berlinale launched with Rebecca Miller’s quirky new romantic comedy, She Came to Me, starring Peter Dinklage as an opera composer with writer’s block, Anne Hathaway as his neurotic therapist wife, and the scene-stealing Marisa Tomei as a salty, seafaring but very amorous tugboat captain. This was a film with such oddball charm that it was easy to overlook its self-indulgence. Festivals can take themselves far too seriously. She Came to Me...

Winners have been announced at the 73rd Berlin Film Festival, with On the Adamant by Nicolas Philibert scooping the coveted Golden Bear prize as the best film of the festival’s International Competition. Scroll down for the full list of winners, which were revealed Saturday evening at the Berlinale Palast.

The film chronicles a unique day-care center in the heart of Paris that welcomes adults suffering from mental disorders, offering the kind of care that grounds them in time and space and helps them to recover or keep up their spirits.

Introducing the film, jury head Kristen Stewart said the pic is “masterfully crafted” and acts as “cinematic proof of the vital necessity of human expression.”

Other winners in the International Competition included Philippe Garrel, who picked up the Silver Bear for Best Director for his latest pic Le grand chariot (The Plough). Garrel dedicated the award to the late filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard.

On the Adamant, a documentary by French director Nicolas Philibert that gives an intimate look at the patients and caregivers in a mental health center located on the Seine River in the heart of Paris, has won the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival’s Golden Bear for best film.

For his 11th feature, the 72-year-old Philibert spent months aboard a barge anchored on the Seine in Paris, chronicling a mental health care facility that caters specifically to its patients’ creative needs. His documentary explores issues of creativity and art, of sanity and madness, but does so without applying labels or clear-cut distinctions.

“I don’t like partitions or labels,” Philibert said. “In this film on psychiatry, we were always [careful] to not always distinguish very clearly between patients and carers. I tried to reverse the image we always have of mad people [which I see] as discriminating and stigmatizing. I wanted us to be able,...

As the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival drew to a close, the first of the three major international film festivals began giving out its awards. This year’s Berlin jury was headed by Kristen Stewart, and the selections promised to reflect the actress’ famously good taste in movies. But a strong lineup featuring a variety of innovative films from the world’s top directors ensured that their job was never going to be easy. From a timely documentary about the war in Ukraine to a variety of dramas about men trapped in small spaces (see: “Inside” and “Manhole”), the eclectic collection of films had something for everyone.

At last year’s festival, Carla Simon’s Spanish Drama “Alcarras” won the coveted Golden Bear. Several of the biggest names in global cinema also walked away with big prizes, as Claire Denis won the Silver Bear for Best Director for “Both Sides of the Blade...

Veteran French docmaker Nicolas Philibert was the surprise winner of the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, taking the prize for his film “On the Adamant,” a poignant observational study of a Paris mental health care facility.

He received the award from jury president Kristen Stewart, after the star offered an extended and plainly heartfelt ode to the film’s humanity and simplicity: “People have gone in circles for thousands of years trying to pin down what can be deemed art, who’s allowed to do it and what determines its value,” she said, citing the boundary-pushing nature of the festival, and namechecking such opposing philosophers on the matter as Aristotle, Barthes, Sontag and Beavis & Butthead, before concluding, “For all of us, you just know it when you see it.”

It was an apt way to introduce a film that stood out in this year’s Competition...

“Till the End of the Night” opens with what initially seems a Brechtian flourish: a nifty time-lapse shot of a bare shell of an apartment being painted, fitted, decorated and accessorized to an apparently lived-in state, as a vintage German torch song by Heidi Brühl crackles over the soundtrack. It’s not a film set being dressed, however, but a police one — the home base for an elaborate undercover investigation. It’s not the first time Christoph Hochhäusler’s romantic detective thriller will hint at subversive ambitions that turn out, upon closer investigation, to be rather conventional. Tossing a fraught transgender love story in the middle of an otherwise standard cop procedural, the film doesn’t much satisfy on either level, with superficial sexual politics and slack suspense. Despite a Berlinale competition slot, prospects beyond home turf appear limited.

What interest and ambiguity “Till the End of the Night” does...

For a film that hinges on deceptions, betrayals and unexpected allegiances, Till the End of the Night is alarmingly low on intrigue. Christoph Hochhäusler’s crime drama revolves around an undercover cop paired with a trans woman on early prison release to infiltrate an online drug distribution network, their smokescreen relationship tested by his lingering feelings for the person she was before transitioning. That would seem to provide a promising foundation to explore the tricky lines of gender identity and the twisty byways of love. But this unpersuasive mishmash of melodrama and suspense never builds any steam, meaning it doesn’t work in either mode.

Hochhäusler comes from the Berlin School, the new German cinema movement of the mid-1990s and early 2000s that spawned arthouse directors including Christian Petzold and Angela Schanelec, both of whom also have new films in the Berlinale’s main competition this year. The filmmakers...

Romantic crime drama “Till the End of the Night,” which plays in competition at the Berlin Film Festival, has debuted its first clip (below) with Variety, and its poster, designed by the U.S. graphic designer Midnight Marauder.

The film, directed by Christoph Hochhäusler (“The City Below”), is a complex love story intertwined with crime and deception, starring Timocin Ziegler as gay cop Robert, and introducing newcomer Thea Ehre as trans woman Leni. The script is by Florian Plumeyer, and the producer is Bettina Brokemper at Heimatfilm. The Match Factory is handling international sales.

In order to gain the trust of a drugs dealer, undercover cop Robert has to pretend to be Leni’s lover. The police hope her ties with the felon will help him to infiltrate the organization. But while this part of the plan works relatively smoothly, their fake relationship is rocky from the start. Robert was once in love with Leni,...

The German sales company’s slate also includes titles by Margarethe von Trotta, Emily Atef, Tatiana Huezo.

The Match Factory has finalised a seven-strong slate of titles playing at the 2023 Berlinale, on which it represents world sales rights.

The company’s lineup includes four titles in Berlin Competition, including German director Christian Petzold’s latest film Afire, about a group of friends in a holiday home by the Baltic Sea where emotions run high as the parched forest around them catches fire.

The film stars Thomas Schubert, Paula Beer, Langston Uibel, Enno Trebs and Matthias Brandt and is produced by...

The Berlin Film Festival on Monday unveiled the titles selected for its official competition as well as its sidebar Encounters competitive section.

A total of 18 films have been selected for the international competition with highlights including Christian Petzold’s latest film Roter Himmel (Afire), Margarethe von Trotta directing Phantom Thread star Vicky Krieps in Ingeborg Bachmann — Journey Into the Desert, and Philippe Garrel returns with a new feature titled The Plough.

Scroll down for the full lineup.

This morning the festival also revealed an extra special screening: Actor and filmmaker Sean Penn will debut a documentary titled Superpower, a film shot in Ukraine last year at the outbreak of Russia’s invasion and follows president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The Berlin Film Festival takes place February 16-26.

Organizers have already announced more than 100 titles across sidebars spanning Panorama, Forum, and Berlinale Special. The festival had initially done a good job of increasing...