Catalan family drama 'Alcarràs' wins Berlin's Golden Bear

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentKino Lorber has acquired North American rights for Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović’s debut feature “Murina” which won the Golden Camera Award at last year’s Cannes Film Festival.Executive produced by Martin Scorsese and lushing lensed by Hélène Louvart (“The Lost Daughter”), “Murina” will be playing on opening night of the First Look Festival at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York.“Murina” is a tense and sensual tale about a restless teenager, Julija, whose urge to break free from her oppressive father and isolated existence in coastal Croatia is triggered by the visit of a family friend. Variety‘s Jessica Kiang wrote in her review that “If Patricia Highsmith had ever written a coming-of-age story set on the rocky, clear-watered Croatian coastline, it might have looked a lot like Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović’s bright, brooding debut.” The movie also boasts a breakthrough performance by Gracija Filipovic, a promising young actor and professional swimmer who was one of this year’s 10 Shooting Stars at the Berlinale.

The Simpsons just released a commissioned image of the animated cartoon family in support of Ukraine’s fight against Russia.

Resembling more of a personal tribute than exhaustive biography, Pietro Marcello‘s Lucio Dalla documentary, “For Lucio,” takes its title as an invitation. A rambling eulogy that is just as often confusing as it is profound, Marcello’s wisp of a film (running less than 80 minutes) may be missing key context for those not already versed in the life and music of the politically-oriented Italian singer-songwriter.

Many of Hong Sang-soo’s films are structured around a woman’s solitary wanderings. The single ladies played by Kim Min-Hee in “On the Beach at Night Alone” or “The Woman Who Ran,” or Lee Hye-Young in “In Front of Your Face,” are free radicals, moving from encounter to encounter and disrupting the equilibrium of the people they meet, as meandering conversations reveal a friend’s dissatisfaction or a couple’s disagreement.

Leaves rustle in the wind, sand swiftly lifted from the ground as it resumes its nomadic journey, taking from one place to give to another. Around it, all seems to be consumed by stillness, but, in the safety of this deceiving quietness, life bursts through settled roots to create anew.

Premiering in the Special Gala section of this year’s Berlinale, the latest film from Italian director Dario Argento is surprising in more ways than one. Rather than copy the style of the giallo films from the 1970s and 1980s that made him famous (“The Bird with the Crystal Plumage,” “Deep Red,” and “Suspiria,” to cite just a few), his “Dark Glasses” finds ingenious ways to retain the core of the giallo while adapting to our current times.

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Michael Nordine authorAnyone who’s ever scoffed at a company referring to its employees as family will immediately hear alarm bells ringing when Zhanna (Lyudmila Vasilyeva), the matriarch who runs Produkty 24, tells her workers they aren’t just employees, they’re her children. It won’t take long for “Convenience Store” to justify that skepticism and then some: A highlight of the 2022 Berlin Film Festival’s Panorama program, Michael Borodin’s look at an Uzbek immigrant working in the Moscow outskirts is all the more disturbing for the fact that it’s based on a real case of human trafficking.The marriage of Mukkahabat (a gently devastating Zukhara Sanzysbay) to a fellow worker is our entree into this world, but it’s hardly a storybook wedding.

The Sole family grows peaches. Round white peaches ripen first; then the flat white peaches that supermarkets like; then yellow cling peaches. Their farmhouse is surrounded by the plantation they have tended for three generations, promised to them in perpetuity by the current owner’s great-grandparents during the Civil War. Memories are long in their corner of Catalonia. Nobody remembers a time before peaches. Harvesting determines the rhythm of their rumbustious family life. When the fruit ripens, it’s all hands on deck.

Cinema Guild has acquired U.S. rights to The Novelist’s Film, the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize winner from South Korean writer-director Hong Sangsoo, which recently made its world premiere at the 2022 Berlin Film Festival. The film is the third Silver Bear winner in as many years from Hong—who won Best Director for The Woman Who Ran in 2020 and Best Screenplay for Introduction in 2021—and will be the 11th of the director’s works released by Cinema Guild in the last seven years.

Holly Jones Karlsson: It’s also the expectations they put on themselves. Harry’s constantly torn between what he feels is good music and what is just making money, a concern he shares with his father.

Winners are being announced for the 72nd Berlin International Film Festival. Follow the ceremony live via the below video feed from 7PM CET / 10AM PST, with the red carpet now underway.

Jamie Lang Featuring in this year’s eight iteration of the Berlinale Co-Production Market’s Co-Pro Series, Italian drama “Belcanto” will hope to follow a trail blazed by former participating European standouts such as “Babylon Berlin,” “Freud,” “Furia,” and last year’s Series Mania winner “Blackport.”Co-created by the trio of Mariano Di Nardo, Antonio Manca and Federico Fava and produced by leading Italian distribution-production house Lucky Red, the series project is set in 1798, as 14-year-old Carolina, her 17-year-old sister Antonia and their mother Maria seek refuge in the city of Milan after stabbing their violent father to death.The elder sister dreams of becoming a renowned singer, much as her mother once hoped for when she was the girl’s age. However, an unhappy and often violent marriage waylaid young Maria, who is now willing to go the extreme lengths to ensure that her daughter is afforded every opportunity withheld from herself.

Holly Jones Set in Costa da Caparica, Portugal, amidst the 2008 economic crisis, “Vanda” – which screened at Berlin Film Festival’s European Film Market – tells the true-to-life story of distressed hairdresser turned unlikely criminal Dulce Caroço.Our titular character, played by Gabriella Barros (“Al Berto”), is introduced as she lies on the floor, vacant-faced, smoking a cigarette. Moments later, we see her doused in disguise, a blond wig and oversized sunglasses.In this hour-long, crime-heist episodic, created by Patrícia Müller (“Madre Paula”) and directed by Simão Cayatte (“A Viagem”), Vanda goes from surviving to destitute in a matter of scenes.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentLoco Films, the Paris-based world sales and production company, has unveiled the trailer for Yulia Trofimova’s feature debut “The Land of Sasha” which is premiering today at the Berlinale, in the Generation 14plus strand.“The Land of Sahsa” tells the story of an indecisive 18-year-old struggling to pursue his desire to become a painter as his mother urges him to choose a safer career path. The sudden appearance of the boy’s estranged father complicates things further. But when Sasha has an unexpected encounter with an unusual girl called Zhenia, he realizes he has no choice but to finally grow up.“The Land of Sasha” was produced by Katerina Mikhaylova and Konstantin Fam for Moscow-based Vega Film.

Emilio Mayorga Carla Simón’s first feature “Summer 1993” was a knockout; a Generation Kplus and Best First Feature award winner at the 2017 Berlinale and Spain’s 2018 Oscars submission, winning three Spanish Academy Goya Awards. The director has since become a reference within a new wave of Catalan women filmmakers that have broken out to considerable box office and festival success.Now, Simón competes in Berlin’s main competition with her sophomore effort “Alcarràs,” exploring her own roots through her adoptive mother’s family.Set in the so-called Catalan Far West, in a small village near Lleida, the film is shot entirely using non-professional actors.

Manori Ravindran International EditorIsabelle Huppert, this year’s recipient of the Berlinale’s Honorary Golden Bear, has pulled out of attending the festival after testing positive for COVID in Paris.The festival confirmed the French star’s absence on Monday night.“Unfortunately, today Isabelle Huppert has been tested positive for the coronavirus in Paris and therefore she will not be able to attend the Berlin International Film Festival,” reads a statement from the Berlinale.“While informing the festival, she emphasized that she feels very dedicated to the Berlinale and wants to participate in any possible way also to support her latest film ‘À Propos de Joan.'”Berlinale artistic director Carlo Chatrian explained that because Huppert “doesn’t feel sick,” the festival will go ahead with its planned ceremony on Tuesday honoring the “Elle” actor with its lifetime achievement award. Huppert join in via a live link from Paris.

The streets outside her window are dripping with hope, and yet Élisabeth (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is lost. It is Paris, 1981, a new president has been elected, and Élisabeth’s husband has left, claiming the thrillingness of motion by moving in with a new girlfriend while his ex is left with the stagnance of remaining, the apartment where they’ve raised their children, Judith (Megan Northam) and Matthias (Quito Rayon-Richter), at once comfortingly familiar and dreadfully new.

EXCLUSIVE: Shooting upcoming Netflix pic Against The Ice was no straightforward task, as its stars and director reveal to Deadline in a first interview as a trio.

EXCLUSIVE: Isaki Lacuesta’s drama One Year, One Night (Un Año, Una Noche), about survivors grappling with trauma following the devastating terrorist attack at Paris’ Bataclan theater on November 13, 2015, world premieres in competition at the Berlin Film Festival today. Check out a clip above as a group of friends discusses messages of support they received in the wake of the tragedy.