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Die Lage (Condition)

For many, myself included, this is the Berlinale lineup we anticipate most each year: "The 42nd Berlinale Forum will be showing 38 films in its main program, including 26 world premieres and 8 international premieres." There'll be special screenings, too, which we'll be hearing about later, but for now, the main program with synopses from the festival:

Al Juma Al Akheira (The Last Friday) by Yahya Alabdallah, Jordan/United Arab Emirates - International Premiere. "Taxi driver Yousef is forced to bring some order into his failed existence. This lovingly photographed film casts a laconic and occasionally humorous gaze on daily life in the Jordanian capital Amman."

Ang Babae sa Septic Tank (The Woman in the Septic Tank) by Marlon N Rivera, the Philippines. "In this biting satire, three young filmmakers do everything in their power to obtain international fame. They are all too aware of foreign audiences' expectations of Philippine cinema: prostitution,...

The 2012 Berlin International Film Festival has announced films in both the Forum and short film programs. The former is themed around "everyday life and fantasy," annd will be showing 38 films in its main programme, including 26 world premieres and 8 international premieres. This year’s special screenings will be announced in a second press release.. The latter has 27 films from 22 countries will be competing for the Golden Bear and Silver Bear Jury Prize, the Daad Short Film Award and a short film nomination for the European Film Prize. The full announcements are below in two separate press releases, the first discussing the Forum program and the second listing the short films. Forum 2012: Everyday Life and Fantasy Differing life plans, generational conflicts and the ambivalence of so-called progress are at the centre of numerous films in the 2012 Forum programme. As such, Ann-Kristin Reyels’ film Formentera follows a...

Filmmakers Carlos Reygadas, Andrei Zvyagintsev, Sergei Loznitza, Pedro Gonzalez-Rubio, Alex van Warmerdam and the team of Peter Brosens/Jessica Woodworth are among the 33 selected projects selected for the upcoming CineMart, the International Film Festival Rotterdam’s (Iffr) co-production market. Carlos Reygadas who last gave us austere and majestic Silent Light, definitely tops in his filmography, will be seeking funding for Post tenebras lux. Also from Mexico's Mantarraya Producciones we have Tree Shade (supported by the Hubert Bals Funds) by helmer Pedro Gonzalez-Rubio who gave us one of the year's best film's in the docu-narrative essay Alamar (check out our interview with the director earlier this year). Other directors worth mentioning include master helmer Jan Švankmajer with Hmyz (Insects), Russian talents in The Return's Andrei Zvyagintsev (The Daddy) and recent Cannes selected filmmaker in Sergei Loznitza (In the Fog). Despite receiving a critical bashing, Loznitza's insane roadtrip film...