Berlin Generation Prizes Announced: ‘The Fam’ Wins 14plus Grand Prix

EXCLUSIVE: Fresh off its world premiere in the Berlin International Film Festival’s competition program, where it won the Silver Bear Jury Prize, Maria Speth’s feature documentary Mr Bachmann And His Class has sold into multiple territories.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorARRI Media has closed a deal with Crescendo House – a new boutique distribution company – for North American rights on Marxist vampire comedy “Bloodsuckers,” following its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival.The film, which screened as part of the Berlinale’s Encounters section, was written and directed by Julian Radlmaier.Radlmaier’s script was praised by the jury as being “extravagant, bizarre, and hilarious” when he was presented with the

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.

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

Hours after his Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn won the Golden Bear for best film at the first-ever virtual Berlin International Film Festival, Romanian director Radu Jude took aim at what he called the "bullshit of red carpets" and the false glamour of in-person film festivals.Jude said he was "quite happy" not to have had to attend a fancy awards gala in Berlin on Friday to receive his Golden Bear.

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.

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Pornfrom Romanian director Radu Judehas won the Golden Bear for best film at the 2021 Berlin International Film Festival. A scathing social satire about sex, lies and videotape, the movie was shot entirelyduring COVID lockdown last summer, with cast and crew all wearing antiviral masks.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorSales agent M-Appeal has closed further territory deals for Japanese filmmaker Ryūsuke Hamaguchi’s “Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy,” which just won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival.Benelux rights have gone to September Film, and StraDa Films has picked the film up in Greece. September Film plans to release the title theatrically post pandemic.

Japanese filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi returns to what are fast becoming his signature themes in Berlin competition contender Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy: Odd coincidence, mysterious doubling, and intelligent women compelled by powerful but uncertain feelings. Many critics likened Hamaguchi's 2015 breakthrough, Happy Hour, to a sprawling literary novel (the film was five hours long and won plaudits for its beguiling dialog and finely observed set pieces).

La Mif (The Fam), a coming-of-age drama from Swiss director Fred Bailif, has won the top prize for best film in the Generation 14Plus sidebar of the 2021 Berlin International Film Festival. Bailif'sfictional look inside a residential care facility housing teenage girls "pulls you in, never lets you go, and hits straight to the heart," according to the Generation jury.

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 Berlin International Film Festival has crowned winners from its youth-focused Generation and Shorts programs. In Generation Kplus, the Grand Prix for Best Film went to Han Shuai’s Summer Blur, with a special mention for Betania Cappato’s A School in Cerro Hueso.

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.

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.