Berlin Competition Title ‘Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy’ Acquired By M-Appeal, Trailer Debuts (EXCLUSIVE)

Jamie Lang For the third year in a row, Netflix has a film in the main competition at the Berlin Film Festival. This year, Alonso Ruizpalacios’ “A Cop Movie” follows the path first blazed by Isabel Coixet’s “Elisa Y Marcela,” which at the time was met with a letter from 160 German independent exhibitors demanding the film be removed from competition.

Jamie Lang Brussels-based Best Friend Forever Sales has given Variety exclusive access to the international trailer for Berlin Panorama player “All Eyes Off Me,” the sexually charged sophomore outing of actor-director Hadas Ben Aroya.Told in three distinct yet related chapters, the film begins at a party in Tel Aviv where young Danny is trying to find Max to let him know that she’s pregnant with his child.

The Berlin International Film Festival is standing by its 2021 premiere Black Bach Artsakh, which debuts in the Forum Expanded program during this month’s virtual event, after the film’s synopsis provoked an online backlash.

It’s always interesting to see what an actor will deliver as they make the step towards directing, and for “Next Door” director and star Daniel Brühl has not shied away from a premise that closely parallels, yet distorts, his own life. It’s a film that explores a space of conversation highlighted to great effect in Bong Joon-ho’s recent towering success, “Parasite,” toying with societal dichotomies and opening up discussions around wealth, class, gentrification, and spatial divides.

Samuel Goldwyn Films has acquired North American rights to WWII drama Into the Darkness, from veteran Danish filmmaker Anders Refn and depicting the disintegration of a family unit amid Denmark's slow side into fascism under the shadow of the Third Reich.

Tides just aches to be a waterborne Blade Runner crossed with Mad Max, but instead emerges as even more waterlogged than Waterworld. A soupy, post-apocalyptic Europudding that needed more action, greater imagination and a star of some magnitude in the leading role, this tale of an investigation into the possibility of restoring life to a mostly decimated Earth is all dark, grim and clammy.

Self-taught Vietnamese filmmakerLê Bảo's directorial debut Taste takes place in the Ho Chi Minh City slums where he grew up, but the film centers on a displaced Nigerian man who is a world away from home.

Jamie Lang A year after featuring as the European Film Market’s focus country, Chile returns with a delegate of more than 20 producers who will participate in a virtual stand, backed by ProChile and the Ministry of Culture.Bastard.

Mel Gibson features in this first-look still from Panama, the upcoming thriller from action specialist Mark Neveldine that also stars Cole Hauser. Gibson plays Stark, a former commander who sends James Becker, a rugged and decorated ex-marine (Hauser), undercover to execute a high-value deal with untrustworthy adversaries.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorBy any terms, Berlin’s 2021 European Film Market will deliver its smallest pre-sales market in years.

Christopher Vourlias Silver Bear winner Radu Jude (“Aferim!”) returns to the Berlin Film Festival this year with the competition feature “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn,” the story of a schoolteacher whose life is turned upside-down after a sex video shot with her husband is leaked on the internet.

Jamie Lang International sales agent Be For Films has given Variety exclusive access to the international trailer for Andreas Fontana’s first feature “Azor,” selected for this year’s Encounters section at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Catherine Deneuve, Benoît Magimel and Cécile de France, “Peaceful,” directed by Cannes best actress winner Emmanuelle Bercot, will head Studiocanal’s 2021 Berlin slate.“Peaceful” is produced by Les Films du Kiosque, whose credits include “La Belle Epoque” and Bercot’s own “Standing Tall.”Introduced to buyers from Feb.

Maybe it’s because the film is actually titled “Natural Light,” but it’s hard to watch the new trailer for the upcoming WWII drama and not be cognizant of the lighting. And it’s that lighting that adds to the overall dread and somberness that is prevalent in the upcoming film.

Naman Ramachandran Cinetic Media and HanWay Films have launched sales on writer/director Tony Stone’s Berlin Panorama selection “Ted K,” starring Sharlto Copley (“District 9”).The film tracks a period in the life of Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber, and draws from his personal diaries and accounts from those who knew him during his life in hiding.

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentA portrait of a well-meaning man caught in events he cannot control and understands all too late, Hungarian Denes Nagy’s Berlin Competition entry “Natural Light” has a first trailer, shared exclusively with Variety by sales company Luxbox.Set in icy marshland in Russia during WWII, “Natural Light” accompanies corporal István Semetka, drafted into a Hungarian unit whose mission is to locate and kill Russian partisans hiding in the woodlands.Lodging

Latido Films in the run-up to its world premiere at this years’ Berlinale Generation 14Plus.The Madrid-based sales company has also shared with Variety in exclusivity a first two-minute trailer. The pickup is believed to have been made in a competitive bidding situation with other sales agents circling a title which questions the weaknesses of what Baillif describes as a retrograde juvenile system.He should know.

In Germany, they call the period just before the rise of Adolf Hitler "the dance on the volcano" — the late 1920s and early 1930s when German society, at least in the big cities like Berlin, seemed open, free, and exciting. When no one seemed to notice they were on the edge of catastrophe.

Christopher Vourlias Heretic Outreach has acquired world sales rights to “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn” from acclaimed Romanian writer-director Radu Jude, which world premieres in competition at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, Variety can reveal.Jude’s latest film is the story of a schoolteacher, Emi (Katia Pascariu), whose life is turned upside down after a sex video shot with her husband is leaked on the internet.

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentParis-based Totem Films announced Friday that it is handling sales on Iranian Behtash Sanaeeha and Maryam Moghaddam’s Berlin Film Festival competition entry, “Ballad of a White Cow.” Totem Films will bring the drama onto the market at early March’s European Film Market (EFM).The pick-up is sure to draw attention.