Berlin festival announces this year's competition film slate

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.

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.

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.

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.

Berlinale Encounters hated to Variety about his latest feature before its world premiere on March 3. Cote, in interview, flows.

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.

Berlin this year, at least the first leg of the film festival in March, will be online only, with everyone — critics, reporters and the international film industry — watching the lineup of the 2021 Berlinale from home on their laptops. Everyone, that is, except for this year's competition jury.

It’s been more than a year since we were lucky enough to watch “My Salinger Year” at the 2020 Berlin Film Festival. And wow, things have changed in a year, huh? Well, while the entire world still deals with the global pandemic, IFC Films is preparing the long-awaited release of Philippe Falardeau’s new feature.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefTop Thai director Banjong Pisanthanakun and Korean director-turned-producer Na Hong-jin (“The Chaser”) have teamed to create new Thai horror film “The Medium.”Now in post-production, “The Medium” is a horrifying story of a shaman’s inheritance in the Isan region of Thailand.

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.

HanWay Films and Cinetic have boarded Berlin Film Festival entry Ted K for international and North American sales, respectively. The companies have also released a first look image.

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

The Berlin International Film Festival has unveiled the juries for its 2021 festival sidebars, the films screening outside the main competition at the 71st Berlinale. German actress Jella Haase (Berlin Alexanderplatz), Dutch director Mees Peijnenburg (Paradise Drifters), and German writer-director Melanie Waelde (Naked Animals) will judge the movies running in this year's Generation Kplus and Generation 14plus sections focused on children and youth films.

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.

The Berlin Film Festival on Thursday unveiled the titles that will compete in the 2021 Berlinale as well as the high-profile features screening out of competition in Berlin's Berlinale Specials section.

New films by Celine Sciamma, Hong Sangsoo, Xavier Beauvois, Radu Jude, and the directorial debut of German actor Daniel Brühl were unveiled as part of the 15 competition titles at the 2021 Berlin Film Festival today. READ MORE: The 100 Most Anticipated Films Of 2021 The festival’s 71st edition will take place in two stages.

Leo Barraclough Senior International CorrespondentM-Appeal has taken world distribution rights to Japanese filmmaker Ryūsuke Hamaguchi’s “Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy,” which has its world premiere In Competition at the Berlin Film Festival. Variety has been given exclusive access to the trailer.