Berlin Hidden Gem: Karl Marx, Sergei Eisenstein and Bourgeois Vampires Unite in 'Bloodsuckers'

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.

Young Europeans' swerve toward the right and far right gets another movie thrown at it with the premiere of Je Suis Karl, from German director Christian Schwochow (November Child, Cracks in the Shell).

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

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.

EXCLUSIVE: Julie Taymor is attached to direct Gun Love, an adaptation of the Jennifer Clement novel. Babylon Berlin‘s Liv Lisa Fries is attached to play the role of Margot in the ensemble cast. Marissa Kate Goodhill (Come Away) wrote the script.

Colson Baker — the man also known as musician Machine Gun Kelly — continues to expand his onscreen acting résumé with his latest film, the thrillerOne Way. Baker plays Freddy, who finds himself on a bus headed into the California desert with a potentially fatal wound after a robbery of his former crime boss goes wrong.

When the best-selling author, humorist and onetime stand-up Mishna Wolff decided to take part in the Women's Fellowship at Ubisoft Motion Pictures, she was really in it for the gameplay. "Honestly, I would have done it just for the free video games alone," jokes Wolff about the initiative by the movie arm of the video games publisher, which aims to foster fresh, and female, perspectives on video game adaptations.

In Language Lessons, Natalie Morales —best know for supporting roles on Parks and Recreation, The Grinder and Santa Clarita Diet — has crafted almost the perfect pandemic movie. Written together with her co-star Mark Duplass, the Berlinale-bowing film features just two characters, who are never in the same room together, barely move across only a handful of mostly interior locations and communicate entirely over technology.

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 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.

There’s no shortage of movies about kids who discover they possess special powers. Most of these, however — from The Incredibles to the Harry Potter franchise to the Razzie-nominated Tim Allen-starring Zoom: Academy for Superheroes(no, we didn't bother either) — are very much aimed at a younger audience.

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.

Danis Goulet’s Night Raiders, executive produced by Oscar-winning Jojo Rabbit writer-director Taika Waititi, is no typical sci-fi thriller. An entry in this year’s Berlin Film Festival’s Panorama section and Goulet’s feature debut, the film flips the genre on its head by using the future to confront Canada’s past colonization and subjugation of its First Nation peoples.

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.