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Set during the May 1968 revolution in Paris, Lionel Baier’s “The Safe House” is a comic family portrait filled with ideas that never fully cohere. The film is based on Christophe Boltanski’s Prix Femina-winning biographical novel of the same name, a fact of which we’re reminded numerous times via authorial voiceover. Its snappy, postmodern unfurling, rife with intentionally obvious rear projections, does eventually give way to moving dimensions as the family’s history fades into view, but few political or personal elements amount to anything poignant.

Although Boltanski’s family serves as fuel for the screenplay, “The Safe House” anonymizes them and tilt-shifts some of the story’s details, while keeping the broad premise intact: a saga unfolding in the margins of one of France’s most pivotal modern protests. It’s told, at least initially, through the eyes of a nine-year-old boy (Ethan Chimienti), meant to be Boltanski himself.

Paris, May 1968, becomes more than a backdrop in “The Safe House” (“La cache”), Swiss filmmaker Lionel Baier’s latest. It’s an adaptation of Christophe Boltanski’s Prix Femina winning novel, “La cache,” produced by Bande à Part Films and co-produced with Red Lion, Les Films du Poisson, Rts Radio Télévision Suisse and Srg Ssr, making it a French, Swiss and Luxembourgish co-production. The comedy-drama, which debuts in competition at Berlinale, sees Baier observe an eccentric family.

The ensemble cast features Dominique Reymond as the Grandmother, the late Michel Blanc as Père-Grand, the Grandfather, William Lebghil as the Great Uncle and Aurélien Gabrielli as Little Uncle. Liliane Rovère portrays Hinterland, while Adrien Barazzone and Larisa Faber play the boy’s father and mother, respectively, with Ethan Chimienti as the aforementioned boy. Gilles Privat also joins the ensemble in a key supporting role.

Baier’s film opens with a line from...

Un silence

Working at approximately a film per every three years pace, Joachim Lafosse who last gave us the relationship drama The Restless (a Main Competition title at the tail-end of Cannes in 2021 starring Leila Bekhti and Damien Bonnard), turns to difficult abuse terrain for his tenth feature. Formerly titled “Le Fils de la loi” and co-written with Thomas Van Zuylen, the Belgian filmmaker enlisted Daniel Auteuil, Emmanuelle Devos, Larisa Faber and Salomé Dewaels for what will be a difficult film about the inability to speak out but also the power of remaining silent. Production on Un silence took place in August, and he reteamed with cinematographer Dp Jean-François Hensgens.…...

Markus Schleinzer is a filmmaker who knows how to wait for a payoff: Take the dry in-joke, for example, of waiting seven years to follow his 2011 debut “Michael” with a film called “Angelo.” His tartly brilliant second feature is awash with slow-building irony, though as with his first, there’s precious little mirth in its devastating kicker. An interpretive biopic of Angelo Soliman — an African man kidnapped into slavery as a child, who subsequently rose and fell through the ranks of 18th-century Viennese high society — Schleinzer’s film takes a chillingly but aptly clinical view of a life treated as an amusing human experiment by all but the man living it. Behavior is painstakingly observed and notes are extensively taken, before “Angelo” tersely delivers its own findings on the toxicity of the culture that colonized its title character.

Lest the “Michael”/”Angelo” segue lead viewers to expect a clear partner piece to Schleinzer’s debut,...

Films from Valeria Sarmiento, Benjamín Naishtat, Markus Schleinzer and Simon Jaquemet also selected.

The first films to compete for the Golden Shell at the 2018 San Sebastian Film Festival (Sept 21-29) have been announced.

They include Claire Denis’ English-language sci-fi title High Life, which stars Juliette Binoche, André Benjamin and Robert Pattinson, Naomi Kawase’s Vision, which also stars Binoche alongside Masatoshi Nagase, and South Korean director Kim Jee-woon’s Illang: The Wolf Brigade , a remake of anime Jin-Roh from Ghost In The Shell writer Mamoru Oshii. Kim’s I Saw The Devil competed at the festival in 2010.

Chilean director Valeria...