Berlin: 'Curtain Call' Sells Wide for Culmination

Filmed in glossy black and white, and adopting a non-judgmental vérité approach, director Carlos Alfonso Corral’s debut is a humanizing look at a small section of the homeless population in El Paso, Texas. “Dirty Feathers,” is a short, but thematically rich, film about those on the margins of society.

International buyers dove into Wash Me in the River. The upcoming action-thriller, starring Robert De Niro, John Malkovich, and Jack Huston from Midnight in the Switchgrass director Randall Emmett, was snatched up by European and Asian buyers at Berlin's European Film Market.

It’s 1943. A particularly cruel winter has swept through the occupied Soviet Union.

One year in the life of a teenager can feel like an eternity. The intensity of the fleeting romances, the wild swings between happiness and despair, the thrilling yet uneasy anticipation of a future that seems simultaneously imminent and distant — it’s a wonder that we come out of adolescence intact.

Amazon Prime Video has swooped on the critically acclaimed Chilean LGBTQ+ drama My Tender Matador for Latin America. The film —which first bowed in the Venice Days sidebar of the 2020 Venice Film Festival —won the audience award in the Open Horizons section of the 2020 Thessaloniki Film Festival.

When the best-selling author, humorist and onetime stand-up Mishna Wolff decided to take part in the Women's Fellowship at Ubisoft Motion Pictures, she was really in it for the gameplay. "Honestly, I would have done it just for the free video games alone," jokes Wolff about the initiative by the movie arm of the video games publisher, which aims to foster fresh, and female, perspectives on video game adaptations.

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.

The first thing to understand about the social dynamics in Mexico around police is that they differ greatly from how the public in the United States relates to law enforcement officers. Stateside, both the uncritical reverence some feel toward them—namely the Blue Lives Matter crowd—and the terror they incite among BIPOC communities emanate from their violent efficaciousness and status as inflexible figures reveling in a lack of accountability.

As industry guests enjoy the Berlinale from home this year, eagle-eyed viewers will take pleasure in spotting a familiar location in the latest film from South Korean auteur and festival-regular Hong Sang-soo. If we can’t stroll around Potsdamer Platz this year, at least the characters in “Introduction“ can share a moment there.

The latest from T.J.Martin and Daniel Lindsay, directors of “Undefeated” and “LA 92,” “TINA” looks like another documentary that came off of a factory line, complete with the usual panning shots of contact sheets, dramatic zooms into rolling tapes, cross-cutting between audio interviews and their published print versions, melodramatic score cues doing their best to emulate Philip Glass.

There is an unavoidable distance in life between ourselves and those who came before. Parents, grandparents; no matter how open and honest they are with their children or younger relatives, there is a sense that their pasts remain partial enigmas.

U.K.-based sales outfit Alief has racked up a series of international territory deals for Isaac, a romantic drama from directors Ángeles Hernández and David Matamoros, about two childhood friends who reconnect as adults. Hernández and Matamoros were both producers on Netflix's Spanish-language horror hit The Platform.

For the students at a remote boarding school for Kurdish boys, survival is a matter of course, particularly during the frigid depths of winter. The meals are meager, the heating doesn’t work, and even the principal’s car won’t start.

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.

South Korean filmmaker Hong Sangsoo has been a particular favorite at the Berlin Film Festival for quite some time — he won the Best Director prize there last year for The Woman Who Ran — and he’s back again this year with another competition entry, Introduction.

Exactly one year ago, Chinese film buyers were almost entirely absent from Berlin's European Film Market as broad swaths of the world's second-biggest economy remained in a state of total shutdown. Business in the U.S.

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.

Pierre Morel’s upcoming action thrillerThe Blacksmith, which recently lost its star Nick Jonas due to a scheduling conflict, has a deal in place for the important China market. Beijing-based distributor Infotainment China Media picked up rights to the film ahead of Berlin's European Film Market and plans to stick with the project despite the casting change-up.

There’s no doubt about it, it’s all in the eyes: an ice-blue stare, locked on you, promising satisfaction and loyalty without asking for anything in return. That’s what love is, and Dan Stevens is the humanoid robot here to give it to us.

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.