We've canvassed the local distributors to see who has picked up some of the most talked about films from the recent Berlin Film Festival. Below is a list of films you'll soon get to see here in Australia.
Fire at Sea
When Gianfranco Rosi's Fire at Sea won this year's coveted Golden Bear, awarded from a jury headed by Meryl Streep, it came as no surprise. The documentary had been at the top of critics' lists and tells a story of refugees, the burning hot issue in Germany at present. After Rosi's surprise win at the 2013 Venice Film Festival for his documentary Sacro GRA, this Berlinale win positions him as a major European talent. Working virtually alone, Rosi spent a year on the island of Lampedusa, roughly halfway between the coast of Africa and Sicily, where undocumented outsiders first land. Focusing on the human tragedy we watch the refugee situation from the point of view of the local doctor as well as the 12-year-old son of a local fisherman. (Curious Films)
The Commune (Kollektivet)
Thomas Vinterberg's semi-autobiographical tale was inspired by his own childhood living in a Danish collective. The Commune reunites him with actors from his 1998 Dogme movie Festen (The Celebration). Trine Dyrholm deservedly won the best actor Silver Bear for playing a woman losing her grip in the communal situation, and Ulrich Thomsen as her husband bringing a younger woman into the fold. Interestingly the younger woman is played by Vinterberg's much younger second wife, Helene Reingaard Neumann. A distribution deal is yet to be done for Australia but it surely will be.
Things to Come
Mia Hansen-Løve won the directing Silver Bear for this tribute to her own mother. Isabelle Huppert plays a French philosophy teacher who after successfully building a career and a family, finds herself alone as her husband leaves her for a younger woman. Clearly a recurring theme at the Berlinale! Though here the story focuses squarely on Huppert's character and her coming to grips with her future alone. And it's not without humour. (Palace)
Being 17
At 72, André Téchiné (Wild Reeds) collaborates with Girlhood director Celine Sciamma on the screenplay for a film which could be his most youthful story yet. Loosely inspired by New Wave, a 2008 TV film directed by Gaël Morel (the actor from Wild Reeds), the story takes place over a year in a small community in the Pyrénées where two boys seem to be enemies though are really dealing with their coming of age—and coming out.
War on Everyone
This outright comedy by John Michael McDonagh (The Guard) took audiences out of the heaviness of so much of the Berlinale fare into an entirely un-PC world of renegade buddy cops that Australians should wholly appreciate. Alexander Skarsgård is different to any character he's ever played, sending up his sex symbol image in a pair of canary yellow undies (he's soon to be seen as Tarzan) while Michael Peña is the funniest we've ever seen him as well. (Icon)
Alone in Berlin
Emma Thompson and Brendan Gleeson (from The Guard) must be two of the best actors on the planet yet here we struggle to believe them as the real life ordinary German couple who took on the Nazis in wartime Berlin. Adapted from Hans Fallada's 1947 bestseller, the handsomely mounted film, directed by Frenchman Vincent Pérez (who is better known as an actor), is worth a look if you are a fan of history. (Icon)
Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures
My favourite film in Berlin came from Sundance where I had previously met directors Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato in 2011 for their Chaz Bono doc, Becoming Chaz. But this is their best doc ever. Mapplethorpe's obsession with penises comes to the fore and while it's hilarious watching archivists handling the now precious artworks, the beauty here is that the media darling and rabid self promoter talks throughout the film. It's tragic to think that the prolific trailblazer who helped elevate photography into the art world, was just hitting his stride when he died from AIDS in 1989. (MIFF)
A Quiet Passion
This big festival surprise screened out of competition. The openly gay though celibate British filmmaker Terence Davies directs outspoken lesbian actress Cynthia Nixon (Sex and the City) in the story of reclusive 19th century American poet Emily Dickinson, who quite possibly died a virgin. Her heart-wrenching verses should attract new fans after Davies' masterful movie and Nixon's fine performance as a woman who these days might be considered agoraphobic.
Midnight Special
Michael Shannon has some eleven movies in the can and here re-teams with his Take Shelter director Jeff Nichols for an unusually slow-burning sci-fi movie about his son with unusual powers. The kid, played by Jaeden Lieberher from St. Vincent, is someone to watch out for as well. (Roadshow, April 21)
Genius
Critics have written that the idea of making a film about a gifted literary editor is not particularly cinematic and Colin Firth's portrayal of Maxwell Perkins who finessed the works of Ernest Hemingway (Dominic West), F. Scott Fitzgerald (Guy Pearce) and most prominently here Thomas Wolfe (Jude Law), is certainly leaden. Accomplished theatre director Michael Grandage's cinematic debut was a big deal, though Nicole Kidman is probably the only actor to give a natural performance as Wolfe's partner of four years, Aline Bernstein. Grandage is keen for Kidman to star in his second movie, the adaptation of their hit stage production, Photograph 51. (Roadshow)
Mahana
Lee Tamahori returns to Kiwi cinema for the first time in 20 years with his Once Were Warriors star Temuera Morrison. If you don't go looking for the kind of action Tamahori has become known for (Mulholland Falls, Die Another Day) this historical yarn based on Whale Rider author Witi Ihimaera's novel Bulibasha and inspired by his life, makes for a good night's entertainment. (eOne)
24 Weeks
At a time when the Hitler comedy Look Who's Back is making waves, 24 Weeks was the only German film to make waves at the 2016 Berlinale. The abortion drama had tongues wagging because of its unusual polemic—whether a woman should abort her foetus when it is diagnosed with Down Syndrome and heart problems on the verge of her third trimester. Though ultimately the film was deemed leaden in its execution.
Zero Days
Alex Gibney has done it again, this time taking on the highly sophisticated computer malware, Stuxnet, and exposing an American-Israeli cyberwar operation designed to destabilise centrifuges in an Iranian nuclear plant. It's not exactly a date movie, but is totally horrifying. Gibney basically delivers a near two hour lecture on what cyber warfare is among nation states, how it developed and what it means for the world we live in where everything--from street lights and water supply to banking, manufacturing and transportation--is part of some kind of computer controlled grid.
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