There may be a few laughs in Berlin this year from the Coen Brothers’opening film, Hail, Caesar! their unofficial fourth idiot instalment with George Clooney after what Clooney affectionately terms their trilogy of idiots,O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Intolerable Cruelty, and Burn After Reading. Though Channing Tatum attempts to steal the show with some pretty spectacular tap dancing.
Meryl Streep is known to be very funny, but after an early rough start, she’ll be taking her first ever role as jury head very seriously. The Coens certainly did last year in Cannes, even if the jury wrongly awarded many of the prizes. Streep is joined by Britain’s Clive Owen, photographer Brigitte Lacombe, Italian actress Alba Rohrwacher and feisty Polish director Malgorzata Szumowska.
The contenders include two world premieres starring Australians. Nicole Kidman teams up with Michael Grandage for his first feature film, the UK-US production Genius about Max Perkins (Colin Firth) the brilliant editor who helped Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Wolfe (Jude Law). Grandage had directed Kidman in the stage production of Photograph 51--and plans to make a film of that too. He will be in town together with Firth and Law though Kidman, who plays a supporting role as theatrical costume designer Aline Bernstein won’t make it to the German capital.
Joel Edgerton was at the festival on the weekend for Jeff Nichols’ sci-fi thriller Midnight Special starring alongside Nichols regular Michael Shannon. Interestingly Edgerton stars in the writer-director’s upcoming interracial drama Loving alongside Shannon and Kiwi actor and former Sydney resident Marton Csokas.
Watch the trailer for 'Midnight Special'
While there are no Australian feature premieres in Berlin, Lee Tamahori is flying the New Zealand flag with Mahana (The Patriot) screening out of competition. Set around New Zealand’s East Coast in the 1960s, the film, which reunites the director with his Once Were Warriors’ star, Temuera Morrison, follows two shearing families who are bitter rivals.
The Australian-New Zealand sci-fi series Cleverman from creator Ryan Griffen, and directors Wayne Blair and Leah Purcell, will be one of six series premiering in the festival’s television strand. Set in the near future the series focuses on a species that must live amongst humans and battle for survival. Many of the stories are drawn from Aboriginal story-telling and Griffen obtained permission from Aboriginal elders to use them.
Rosemary Myers’ feature directing debut, the quirky coming-of-age story Girl Asleep, will have its international premiere in the youth-oriented Generation 14plus Competition. It had been a hit at the Adelaide Film Festival
Bryn Chainey's comedic short Kill Your Dinner premieres in the Generation Kplus Competition, while Alice Englert's The Boyfriend Game comes to the festival after it screened in Toronto last year. Englert's film, which follows two best friends as they invent their ideal imaginary males, stars Morgana Davies, excellent in The Tree, The Hunter and television’s Devils Playground.
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