Berlin Film Festival Unveils Competition Lineup

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.

Spain brings an extraordinary gamut of movie titles to Berlin. Some highlights:“All the Moons,” (Igor Legarreta)A France-Spain co-production, “All the Moons” tracks two vampires in the northern Spain during the last Carlist war.

The underseen but arresting 2016 documentary feature Peter and the Farm is a warts-and-all portrait of a flinty Vermont loner and his volatile relationship to the land that has consumed him for more than three decades. Its director, Tony Stone, now blurs the line between nonfiction and narrative filmmaking to depict another solitary man inseparable from his natural environment in Ted K, a piercing psychological probe into the domestic terrorist known as the Unabomber.

Three bright, talented young people in their 20s struggle to find their place in a rotten society, scarred by Germany’s defeat in World War I and menaced by the rising tide of Nazism, in Fabian — Going to the Dogs (Fabian oder Der Gang vor die Hunde.) This second screen adaptation of Erich Kastner’s now classic 1931 novel (the first was directed by Wolf Gremm in 1980) marks a stylistically daring attempt to capture the zeitgeist by director Dominik Graf, who returns to Berlin competition where

You have to wonder about the shelf life of all the compact film productions being stitched together around COVID pandemic restraints, particularly those in which the visual field is limited to computer desktops.

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.

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.

Berlinale Executive Director Mariette Rissenbeek and Artistic Director Carlo Chatrian were determined to be in a cinema today when broadcasting the lineup for this year’s Competition program.

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.

BERLIN -- The Berlin International Film Festival on Thursday announced 15 films that are part of this year's competition and will compete for the top Golden and Silver Bear awards.

Naman Ramachandran Actor Daniel Bruhl’s directorial debut and new titles from Radu Jude and Hong Sangsoo are among the 15 competition titles in the Berlin Film Festival, all of which were revealed Thursday.Five of the titles are from female filmmakers (some of whom are co-directors on titles), on par with last year’s competition, when six of the 18 competition titles were helmed by women.The 2021 edition is, understandably, very different from previous editions.

This week of Berlin International Film Festival announcements comes to a close with the main course – the Competition and Special Screenings programs. You can watch the presser live here from circa 11AM Berlin time, it’s half in German and half in English.

The Berlin Film Festival has unveiled the titles that will screen in its Panorama, Encounters, andPerspektive Deutsches Kino sidebars. The art-house heavy selection for the 2021 Panorama includes several directorial debuts, including British drama Censorby Prano Bailey-Bond,Danis Goulet's Canadian/New Zealand co-production Night Raiders, andThe World After Us, the first feature from French filmmakerLouda Ben Salah-Cazanas, which will have its world premiere in Berlin.

The Berlin Film Festival has unveiled the titles that will screen in its Forum section this year, which focuses on cutting-edge and experimental cinema.