Berlin Generation Contender ‘Mission Ulja Funk’ Boarded By PTI (EXCLUSIVE)

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.

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.

EXCLUSIVE: Natalie Morales makes her feature directing debut with Language Lessons which will have its world premiere in the Specials section of the Berlin Film Festival next week. Written by Morales and Mark Duplass, the darkly comic drama is an exploration of platonic love. Duplass is also an exec producer along with his brother Jay Duplass. Check out an exclusive clip from the movie above.

EXCLUSIVE: Mark Ivanir, the Ukrainian-Israeli actor who has starred in The Good Shepherd and Netflix series Away, has joined the cast of Season 4 of German crime drama Babylon Berlin.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentDue to the pandemic, Berlin Film Festival artistic director Carlo Chatrian and his programming team this year were forced to “think of the selection in different terms,” he says, when the fest adopted its two-step formula — an industry and press-focused event March 1-5 and a Summer Special open to the public June 9-20 — and what they “had to offer” to the film industry changed.

Filmax, Film Factory and Latido, the three leading film sales companies for cinema from Spain and Latin America, have joined forces to create a single umbrella association to promote Spanish-language film and TV worldwide. Filmax has handled titles such as Polo Menárguez's El Plan (2019) and is selling Toño Lopez's upcoming comedy Brothers-in-Law at the virtual European Film Market (March 1-5).

An Asian horror dream team has formed aroundThe Medium, a supernatural horror flick that will be co-produced by South Korea's Showbox and Thai studio GDH 599. Korea's Na Hong-jin, the visionary auteur behind The Wailing, Yellow Sea and The Chaser, will produce the film based on an original story he developed.

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.

EXCLUSIVE: Paris-based sales outfit Reel Suspects has taken world sales, excluding Russia, on Uldus Bakhtiozina’s debut feature film Tzarevna Scaling, which has been selected for this year’s Berlinale Forum program.

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.

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.

Naman Ramachandran Australia’s Stranger Than Fiction Films and the U.K.’s Arrow Pictures have teamed for theatrical documentary “River,” commissioned by BBC Arts and ABC Arts.Exploring the relationship between humans and rivers, the documentary spans six continents.

A week before the official kick-off of Berlin's European Film Market, Culmination Pictures has closed a slew of international pre-sales for Curtain Call, a period murder mystery from Anand Tucker’s (Shopgirl, Hilary & Jackie) featuring an all-star British cast including Colin Firth, Gemma Arterton, Paapa Essiedu and Simon Russell Beale.

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.

Naman Ramachandran Actors Michael Caine and Glenda Jackson, who’ve won a brace of Oscars each, will headline the cast of “The Great Escapers,” which Pathé will present at the upcoming European Film Market in Berlin.Inspired by true events, the film will tell the story of Bernard Jordan’s (Caine) escape from his care home in 2014 to attend the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings in France.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor“The Metamorphosis of Birds,” which premiered in the Encounters sidebar of the Berlin Film Festival and won the FIPRESCI prize from the international critics’ jury, has been sold in multiple major territories, including the U.S., the U.K., China, Italy and Spain.Portuguese director Catarina Vasconcelos’ “beautifully pensive, lyrical debut feature,” in the words of the Variety review, explores her family stories in the form of a fictionalized

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.