Berlin Hidden Gem: An Empathetic Look at the Closeted Lives of Elderly Men

The German Film and Television Academy Berlin (DFFB), one of Germany’s most prestigious film schools, has sacked its British director, Ben Gibson, following an incident during the Berlin Film Festival in which he exposed his backside to a female student during a heated argument.

An impoverished laborer returns home one day to find that social services have taken his children, after the family’s increasingly dire circumstances push his wife to commit a desperate act. With a corrupt local administrator blocking the way to a fair hearing to get them back, the man decides to cross the country on foot in order to plead his case to the government in Belgrade.

Overshadowed by a grisly, racially motivated shooting in western Germany and the growing pains of new festival leadership, this year’s Berlinale served to illuminate the market dynamics and global issues set to impact the international film and television industry in the run-up to Cannes — provided coronavirus stays away from the Croisette.

Iranian auteur Mohammad Rasoulof, whose sixth feature “There is no Evil” won the Berlin Film Festival’s Golden Bear on Saturday, is one of his country’s most prominent directors even though none of his films have screened in Iran where they are banned. In 2011, the year he won two prizes at Cannes with his censorship-themed “Goodbye,” Rasoulof was sentenced with fellow director Jafar Panahi to six years in prison and a 20-year ban on filmmaking for alleged anti-regime propaganda.

Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof’s drama “There Is No Evil” took home the top Golden Bear prize at the 2020  Berlin Film Festival.

It’s a brave young director who has the gumption to revisit Alfred Doblin’s 1929 Weimar Republic classic Berlin Alexanderplatz. A 1931 film version directed by Piel Jutzi was notably followed by Rainer W.

Running a concise 70 minutes,Last and First Men remains the only feature-length film directed by Johann Johannsson (1969-2018), the Icelandic composer who received Academy Award nominations for The Theory of Everything and Sicario. It was first presented at the Manchester International Festival as a symphonic performance with a live BBC orchestra, and made its official film bow as a Berlinale Special.

Landing under the auspices of the Berlinale’s newly introduced Encounters strand aimed at fostering “aesthetically and structurally daring works,” The Trouble With Being Born, having its world premiere Thursday, could well end up being the most daring – not to mention divisive – film in a festival not known for holding back on provocation.

Joe Manganiello is a crime-fighting superhero who has lost his powers in SpectreVision's gritty, high-concept action flick Archenemy. Directed by Adam Egypt Mortimer, the film is produced by Elijah Wood, Daniel Noah, Lisa Whalen and Kim Sherman.

Queen Latifah and Madalen Mills star in Ray Giarratana’s “The Tiger Rising.” The drama is based on Kate DiCamillo’s New York Times Bestselling children’s book and produced by Deborah Giarratana and Ryan Donnell Smith.  Highland Film Group is handling worldwide sales, which are under at the European Film Market in Berlin.

Queen Latifah and Madalen Mills star in Ray Giarratana’s “The Tiger Rising.” The drama is based on Kate DiCamillo’s New York Times Bestselling children’s book and produced by Deborah Giarratana and Ryan Donnell Smith.  Highland Film Group is handling worldwide sales, which are under at the European Film Market in Berlin.

Dr. Alexei is getting his sexy on.

Are animals more precious than humans? For his debut feature, Eeb Allay Ooo!, Prateek Vats lets the audience decide what to make of the real-life monkey menace that has long plagued the high-security areas around government buildings including the Parliament in India’s capital, New Delhi.

Are animals more precious than humans? For his debut feature, Eeb Allay Ooo!, Prateek Vats lets the audience decide what to make of the real-life monkey menace that has long plagued the high-security areas around government buildings including the Parliament in India’s capital, New Delhi.

There is a white telephone booth with a rotary phone connected to nowhere that sits atop a hill overlooking the town of Otsuchi on Japan’s northeast coast. More than 30,000 people have used it to "speak” to deceased loved ones.

There is a white telephone booth with a rotary phone connected to nowhere that sits atop a hill overlooking the town of Otsuchi on Japan’s northeast coast. More than 30,000 people have used it to "speak” to deceased loved ones.

Filipino director Raya Martin was caught out, for a moment, when first pitching the project that would eventually become his latest feature, Death of Nintendo. Then he decided to simply tell it like it is."This film is Stand by Me … with circumcision," Martin remembers saying, referencing Rob Reiner’s 1986 classic."I was unsure at first how best to describe what we were trying to do," he explains.

For 25 years, from 1992’s “La Frontera” through 2017’s ”A Fantastic Woman,” a subsequent Oscar winner, the Berlinale has prized a rich trove of Chilean movies.

Defiant Dedryck Boyata insists Scottish football's snipers have got it all wrong because Celtic helped make him a Belgium star.

British filmmaking icon Mike Leigh is prepping his next film following 2018's Amazon-backed Peterloo.The project – currently known as Untitled 2020and with plot details being kept under wraps – will shoot in the U.K. this summer.Cornerstone Films will once again handle international sales and will be introducing the project to buyers at the European Film Market in Berlin, with Bleecker Street on board for U.S.