'Ballad of a White Cow': Film Review | Berlin 2021

Young Europeans' swerve toward the right and far right gets another movie thrown at it with the premiere of Je Suis Karl, from German director Christian Schwochow (November Child, Cracks in the Shell).

Angelique Jackson Tracey Deer, an indigenous filmmaker who hails from the Mohawk Nation, has signed with CAA.Deer recently made her narrative feature debut co-writing and directing the coming-of-age film “Beans,” which captures a young Mohawk girl’s experiences during the 1990s Oka Crisis. The feature debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival and also screened at the Berlin Film Festival, after which FilmRise acquired the U.S.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentThe Berlin Film Festival’s European Film Market had a successful 2021 online edition with the participation of 12,000 attendees from 131 countries. The industry event, which took place March 1-5, gathered 504 exhibitors — 215 of which were newcomers at EFM — from 60 countries.

When filmmaker Maria Speth brought her documentary crew to a provincial German school, her goal was "open-ended observation." Observing a classroom where jam sessions and juggling lessons are as likely as lessons in math and grammar, she achieves that and more with Mr. Bachmann and His Class, one of the most effortlessly absorbing and deeply encouraging nonfiction films of recent memory.

Berlin’s Netflix Film MarketFor the last two years, a Netflix panel was the hottest ticket at the Berlinale Series Market Conference. But the U.S.

Not long into I'm Your Man, Dan Stevens' character, a genial android named Tom, arranges a perfectly contrived combination of romantic clichés for his would-be partner, Alma. The rose petals are "artfully" strewn, the candles flicker, and flutes of bubbly are ready for sipping beside the bubble-filled tub.

There’s a brief shot early on in Georgian filmmaker Alexandre Koberidze’s wondrous romance and Berlinale competition entry What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Ras vkhedavt, rodesac cas vukurebt?) that might seem to illustrate something quite mundane. The male protagonist’s soccer practice session has ended.

There's sardonic self-deprecation in the part Daniel Brühl has chosen for himself in his first feature as director, that of a European movie star sweating over an audition for a Hollywood superhero film that stands to push his fame — and his bank account — to the next level. But celebrity entitlement is only one part of the package.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentIranian multihyphenate Maryam Moghaddam was last seen on screen in Berlin in Jafar Panahi and Kambuzia Partovi’s “Closed Curtain,” which in 2013 won the Silver Bear for best script. She’s back as protagonist of “Ballad of a White Cow,” which Moghaddam also co-directed and co-wrote with her partner Behtash Sanaeeha.

Manori Ravindran International EditorParis-based Totem Films has scored a raft of international sales on Iranian directors Behtash Sanaeeha and Maryam Moghaddam’s Berlin Film Festival competition entry, “Ballad of a White Cow.”“Ballad of a White Cow,” as sales agent Totem notes, is the story of a woman’s struggle for justice, recognition and independence in today’s Tehran.

Japanese writer-director Ryusuke Hamaguchi won wide acclaim and festival prizes with his 2015 breakthrough feature, the bittersweet ensemble drama Happy Hour. But the nuanced, novelistic eye behind that delicately observed five-hour epic seemed to desert Hamaguchi on his 2018 anti-romance Asako I & II, which premiered to lukewarm reviews in Cannes.

In Dasha Nekrasova’s feature directorial debut, The Scary of Sixty-First, New York City is a desolate place. The sky is a muddy beige with no indication of sun.

There's a gorgeous scene early in Petite Maman that epitomizes the unfussy economy and emotional perceptiveness of Céline Sciamma's films. Watching intently from the back seat of the family car as her mother climbs in, stifling tears, and they head off to begin packing up the home of the maternal grandmother who has recently died, the film's 8-year-old protagonist asks permission to break out the snacks.

Despite its simple title, Mexican filmmaker Alonso Ruizpalacios’ latest feature is far from a simple shoot-'em-up cop movie. It’s more like a cop movie written by Jacques Derrida, directed with nods to Wes Anderson and Jean-Luc Godard and then remixed by Abbas Kiarostami in its efforts to tear down the fourth wall.

Toward the end of Tina, the revealing documentary tribute by Dan Lindsay and T.J. Martin for HBO, Tina Turner is seen in an extended concert clip performing the Beatles' "Help" as a decelerated ballad — intimate, melancholy and full of feeling.

Opening with a very real-looking hardcore sex tape, and climaxing with a deranged orgy featuring super-sized dildos, Romanian writer-director Radu Jude's latest taboo-busting polemical comedy is refreshingly untroubled by tasteful restraint. Shot during COVID lockdown last summer, with cast and crew all wearing anti-viral masks, the snappily titled Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is a scattershot attack on sexual hysteria and political hypocrisy in an era of online slut-shaming.

EXCLUSIVE: New York-based distributor FilmRise has struck a deal with sales firm WaZabi Films for U.S. rights to TIFF 2020 and Berlin 2021 drama Beans.

Most cop movies — and most movies in general — spend the first reel setting up a story that usually kicks off after an “inciting incident,” to quote various screenwriting manuals, which takes place within the first ten or 15 minutes. For the rest of the film, we then watch how that incident unravels and affects the lives of all those involved.

Hungary’s most recent contribution to the implacable flow of war films pouring out of Eastern Europe is a far cry from the Russian tank operas and spectacular disaster films like Battle of Leningrad. Denes Nagy’s sensitive first featureNatural Light (Termeszetes feny), bowing in Berlin competition, is the opposite of these: a slow starter high on atmosphere but low on action, whose horrific main event takes place discreetly off-screen.

ever do nothing nice and easy,” she said in a sultry snarl. “We always do it nice and rough.”“Tina,” the documentary about Turner that premiered at the 2021 Berlin International Film Festival, has moments where it tries to be nice and easy, sliding over difficult portions in Turner’s life in an attempt to find a celebratory tone.