Berlin: Competition Titles 'I'm Your Man,' 'Next Door' Sell Wide

Christopher Vourlias Cercamon has closed major sales for “What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?,” from Georgian director Alexandra Koberidze, which had its world premiere in competition at the Berlin Film Festival.The Dubai-based indie specialist has sealed a multi-territory deal with MUBI, the global distributor and streaming service, which includes the U.S., where the film will be released this fall, Canada, Italy, India, Turkey, and Latin America.Pic has also been sold to the U.K.

EXCLUSIVE: Cinema Guild has secured the North American distribution rights to Expedition Content, a documentary that premiered in the Forum section at the 2020 Berlin International Film Festival and had its U.S. debut as part of Film at Lincoln Center’s Art of the Real. Directed by Ernst Karel and Veronika Kusumaryati, the doc will be released in theaters later this year.

Bleecker Street has picked up the U.S. rights to Maria Schrader's I'm Your Man, which stars Dan Stevens and Maren Eggert and premiered in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Bleecker Street has acquired U.S. rights to Maria Schrader’s I’m Your Man after the film picked up a Silver Bear for Maren Eggert’s lead performance at the 2021 Berlin International Film Festival.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorBleecker Street has acquired U.S. rights to Maria Schrader’s “I’m Your Man,” which won the Berlinale’s Silver Bear for leading performance for Maren Eggert.

BERLIN -- The manager of a prominent Berlin theater has stepped down in the wake of accusations by women of bullying and sexual harassment.Klaus Doerr announced his resignation from the German capital's Volksbuehne theater on Tuesday.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorBerlinale Competition entries from two actors turned directors, Maria Schrader and Daniel Brühl, were among titles on the Beta Cinema slate at the European Film Market to prove popular among international distributors.Schrader, an Emmy Award winner as the director of “Unorthodox,” premiered comic-tragic tale “I’m Your Man,” starring Dan Stevens (“Downton Abbey”), Maren Eggert (“I Was At Home, But…”) and Sandra Hueller (“Toni Erdmann”), at the virtual

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.

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 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.

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.

You have to wonder when she sleeps. The tireless Maria Schrader — fresh off an Emmy win as outstanding director of a limited series for Netflix's Unorthodox and another critically acclaimed turn in front of the camera as East German spy Lenora Rauch in Amazon's Deutschland 89 — somehow managed, during a pandemic, to shoot her fourth feature film.

Cinema Guild has taken U.S. rights to Introduction, Hong Sangsoo’s latest feature that was selected in this year’s competition program at the Berlin International Film Festival.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“Natural Light,” a portrait of the attrition and atrocity of war set at a benighted village in occupied Western Soviet Union in 1943, has clinched its first sales as Paris-based Luxbox rolls out the Berlin Competition player at the European Film Market.Nour Films, whose past pickups include Berlin Golden Bear winner “Touch Me Not,” has closed rights to France.Nour will open “Natural Light” “with great conviction and pleasure” on at least 60 prints

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.

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.

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.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorIn the black comedy thriller “Next Door,” the directorial debut of actor Daniel Brühl, the main character, Daniel, is a successful actor living in an old quarter of Berlin. His day is about to be ruined, and his life too.

Ed Meza @edmezavarWith a strong showing at this year’s Berlin Film Festival that includes the directorial debut of Daniel Brühl and new works by Maria Schrader and Dominik Graf in competition, German films are set to garner much of the spotlight at the accompanying European Film Market.Brühl, who is set to reprise his role as the vengeful Helmut Zemo in the upcoming Marvel series “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” explores the contradictions of present-day Berlin in “Next Door.” The seemingly

Two fine actors volley for advantage across 90 minutes in the tastily insidious little melodrama Next Door (Nebenan).