Berlin: Morgan Freeman Calls for Police Reform With Timely Drama 'The Killing Of Kenneth Chamberlain'

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

Ted K, the true crime drama that premiered at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, has been snapped up for North American distribution by Neon’s boutique label Super Ltd.

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.

Amazon Prime Video has swooped on the critically acclaimed Chilean LGBTQ+ drama My Tender Matador for Latin America. The film —which first bowed in the Venice Days sidebar of the 2020 Venice Film Festival —won the audience award in the Open Horizons section of the 2020 Thessaloniki Film Festival.

Ammar KaliaWhat will the actor and – as of now – visual artist Russell Tovey make of this week’s nature theme? Find out as he joins the Perrys to discuss contemporary art and help choose favourites from the public submissions. Grayson also chats to locked-down artists Andy Goldsworthy and Polly Morgan.

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.

Ed Meza @edmezavarPalestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir’s Gaza-set drama “The Oblivion Theory” has won the top prize at the Berlinale Co-Production Market.Presented by Paris-based Incognito Films and Berlin’s One Two Films, the film is based on José Eduardo Agualusa’s novel “A General Theory of Oblivion,” although the book’s story has been moved from Angola to Palestine during the First Intifada, the sustained protests by Palestinians against Israel occupation that lasted from 1987 to 1993.The

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterNeon has acquired North American rights to Céline Sciamma’s latest feature, “Petite Maman,” following its premiere at the Berlin Film Festival.The sale reunites Sciamma with Neon, the New York-based independent studio that released her acclaimed drama “Portrait of a Lady on Fire.”Written and directed by Sciamma, “Petite Maman” follows 8-year-old Nelly, who loses her beloved grandmother and goes to help her parents clean out her mother’s childhood home.

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.

U.K.-based sales outfit Alief has racked up a series of international territory deals for Isaac, a romantic drama from directors Ángeles Hernández and David Matamoros, about two childhood friends who reconnect as adults. Hernández and Matamoros were both producers on Netflix's Spanish-language horror hit The Platform.

Jamie Lang For the third year in a row, Netflix has a film in the main competition at the Berlin Film Festival. This year, Alonso Ruizpalacios’ “A Cop Movie” follows the path first blazed by Isabel Coixet’s “Elisa Y Marcela,” which at the time was met with a letter from 160 German independent exhibitors demanding the film be removed from competition.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentParis-based Le Pacte has closed a raft of sales on Olivier Peyon’s “Tokyo Shaking” and Nadine Loiseau’s “Three Times Nothing,” both of which are screening at the Berlin Festival’s virtual European Film Market.A hot title on Le Pacte’s slate, “Tokyo Shaking” sold to Germany and Austria (ZDF), Israel (New Cinema), Canada (Axia Films), Spain (Alfa Pictures) and the Czech Republic and Slovakia (Mediasquad).“Tokyo Shaking” is set on March 11, 2011, when Japan

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.