Brazil Returns in Force at Berlin

Lise Pedersen New York-based doc specialist Cargo Film & Releasing has acquired “Balomania,” which will have its world premiere in the main competition at leading European doc fest CPH:DOX on March 15. Variety is debuting the trailer (below).

A high-politicized edition of the Berlin Film Festival ended Saturday, but divisions surrounding political messaging during the festival appear to be ongoing. 

Manchester United's top-four hopes were dealt a blow with the defeat to Fulham on Saturday.

Martin Scorsese was at the Berlinale this week for the first time in a decade. His presence to collect an honorary Golden Bear was a reminder of the festival’s glories of yesteryear.

Good afternoon Insiders, Max Goldbart here steering you away from Berlin and towards London for the Screenings. Please do read on, and sign up here.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent “Black Tea,” Abderrahmane Sissako‘s lushly lensed romance drama set in China, has been bought by major distributors in key territories ahead of its world premiere in competition at the Berlin Film Festival. Gaumont, which co-produced the film, has sold it to Caramel (Spain), Academy two (Italy), Pandora Films (Germany, Austria), Cineart (Benelux), Films4you (Portugal), Provzglyad (CIS), Mozinet (Hungary), Another World Entertainment (Norway), Film Bazar (Denmark), MCF Megacom (Former Yugoslavia, Albania), Filmstop (Latvia, Estonia), MB Taip Toliau (Lithuania), Imovision (Brazil), AV Jet (Taiwan), Falcon (Indonesia), Pathé BC (Sub-Saharan Africa, Maghreb) and New Cinema (Israel).

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor German filmmaker Nele Wohlatz‘s “Sleep With Your Eyes Open,” which had its world premiere on Saturday in the Encounters section of the Berlin Film Festival, tells a story about the search for a sense of belonging in a foreign country. It starts with Kai, a young Taiwanese woman with a broken heart, arriving at a Brazilian beach resort for a holiday. Here, her life crosses paths with a group of Chinese migrants living in a luxury tower block, and in particular a young woman called Xiaoxin, who accepts her fate, and Fu Ang, who is working in an umbrella store when we meet him but harbors ambitions to become wealthy.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Two Taiwan-based production companies with features in this week’s Berlin Film Festival have joined forces to launch new venture, Long Hu Bao × An Attitude. Taiwan’s Yi Tiao Long Hu Bao International Entertainment, is one of eight co-producers on main competition film “Shambhala,” from Nepal’s Min Bahadur Bham.

The Money Heist prequel series Berlin has been renewed for a second season!

Holly Jones Amongst a slate of auspicious Brazilian films and series featuring in Berlin, “Cidade; Campo”– the latest from arthouse helmer Juliana Rojas – saw its world premiere on Monday, screening as part of the Encounters strand that aims “to foster aesthetically and structurally daring works from independent, innovative filmmakers,” according to the fest. Backed by Brazil’s Dezenove Som e Imagem and Globo Filmes in tandem with France’s Good Fortune Films and Germany’s Sutor Kolonko, the loosely mystical narrative tells two disparate relocation stories fused by longing, grief and a rousing aesthetic.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor “From Hilde, With Love,” which world premiered Saturday in competition at the Berlinale, has debuted its trailer (below). The film, directed by Andreas Dresen, centers on a group of young anti-Nazi activists in Berlin during World War II. (Read Variety‘s review here.) The film, which is being sold by Beta Cinema and is produced by Claudia Steffen and Christoph Friedel for Pandora Film, stars “Babylon Berlin” breakout Liv Lisa Fries and Johannes Hegemann.

The first-ever edition of AfroBerlin put Africa in the spotlight at the Berlin Film Festival and in one key session asked how festivals, streamers, and the wider industry can — and should — support films and filmmakers from the continent.

“The first shape I had in mind for this film was fiction,” filmmaker Mati Diop told a Berlin Film Festival presser this morning when quizzed on the structure of her inventive documentary Dahomey. 

EXCLUSIVE: The EFM market has lift off! In the first major worldwide pact done on the ground here in Berlin, Sony has tied up a deal in the $50M range for Margot Robbie (Barbie) and Colin Farrell (The Batman) package A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, which is one of the market’s hottest scripts.

Sal (Gael García Bernal) exists in a limbo — not the religious notion of a space between life and death, but a nonspace. He lives in a large apartment but appears to have no job or vocation.

When Australian writer Lily Brett published her novel Too Many Men in 2001, critics marvelled at the light, comic tone she had managed to strike in a novel about the lasting impact of the Holocaust, passed down from one generation to the next. Families have their customary jokes; they squabble over the dinner table; they may be funny characters but, underneath it all, there is a consciousness of pain. That’s not an easy balance to strike, as a writer or as an actor.

What would you do if you could extend loved ones’ lives through their memories?

Something eerie is afoot in the small Irish town of Wexford, where coal merchant Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy) raises five young daughters alongside his wife, Eileen (Eileen Walsh). It’s Christmastime 1985, the busiest time of the year for the Furlong family business, but Bill is not feeling like himself.

Catherine Bray Two years after their Berlinale prizewinner “Rabiye Kurnaz vs. George W. Bush,” veteran German director Andreas Dresen and his regular screenwriter Laila Stieler reteam for the moving drama “From Hilde, With Love.” Drawing on the compelling real-life case of the Hilde and Hans Coppi, a young married couple arrested and executed for treason by the Gestapo in wartime Berlin, the film cross-cuts between an idyllic summer romance and much darker later events.

Labyrinthine corridors connect the sprawling worlds within The Grill, a traditional eatery by the hustle and bustle of Times Square in “La Cocina.” Open one door, and you are in the kitchen, a boiler room of rage and frustration tamed only by the often frail bonds of camaraderie; turn a corner, and you’re spat straight onto the busy restaurant floor, where waitresses in matching outfits move like a ballet between tables occupied with birthday boys and men as foreign to politeness as hawks are to the sea.