News

Documentary director Dénes Nagy explores how conflict erodes loyalty, morality and human consciousness in his award-winning first feature

Hungarian director and documentarist Dénes Nagy makes his feature debut with this gruelling, slow-burning drama set in the vast trackless forests of the eastern front during the second world war, a film which won him the Silver Bear for best director at this year’s Berlin film festival. This is a world of brutality and fear from which the movie averts its gaze at key moments, but the chill is unmistakable. The title appears to refer to a light which is inexorably fading.

Having joined the Axis powers, Hungary sends troops into the grim, freezing forests of Ukraine to secure the territory, keep order, establish supply lines and root out pockets of pro-Soviet “partisans”, naturally making an example of them to cow the other resentful civilians into submission. István Semetka, played by Ferenc Szabó,...

Having imbibed the visual qualities of Andrei Tarkovsky and Sharunas Bartas, “Natural Light” director Dénes Nagy delivers exactly the sort of forest-bound World War II movie one might imagine from a first-time helmer smitten by such masters. Technically impeccable and rigorously cleaving to an aesthetic designed to keep the viewer at arm’s length, the film is so intent on privileging the soldier protagonist’s immovable face (when not focusing on the back of his helmet), so determined to keep him frozen and unknowable, that Nagy dispenses with that key ineffable quality: human emotion. , and certainly on a cerebral level there’s much to appreciate, yet “Natural Light” sheds no warmth and offers no insight into the horrors of the human condition during wartime.

During the Second World War, thousands of Hungarian soldiers, aligned with the Axis Powers, patrolled vast swathes of the occupied Soviet Union, keeping an eye on fractious partisans.

This year’s Berlin International Film Festival will look a bit different this year, with a virtual edition taking place March 1-5 for industry and press, then a public, in-person edition kicking off in June.

The complete lineup has now been unveiled, including Céline Sciamma’s highly-anticipated Portrait of a Lady on Fire follow-up Petite Maman, a surprise new Hong Sang-soo feature, the latest work from Ryūsuke Hamaguchi, along with new projects by Radu Jude, Xavier Beauvois, Dominik Graf, Pietro Marcello, Ramon Zürcher & Silvan Zürcher, and more.

Check out each section below.

Competition Tiles

“Albatros” (Drift Away)

France

by Xavier Beauvois

with Jérémie Renier, Marie-Julie Maille, Victor Belmondo

“Babardeală cu buclucsau porno balamuc” (Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn)

Romania/Luxemburg/Croatia/Czech Republic

by Radu Jude

with Katia Pascariu, Claudia Ieremia, Olimpia Mălai

“Fabian oder Der Gang vor die Hunde” (Fabian – Going to the Dogs)

Germany

by Dominik Graf

with Tom Schilling,...