Director Ursula Meier Reflects on the Violence and Beauty of ‘The Line’

Manori Ravindran International EditorWarnerMedia has struck a first-look deal with German-Turkish director Fatih Akin.The tie-up marks the first exclusive deal of its kind for Akin in his 27-year career. The helmer is best known for such films as “In The Fade” (2017), “Head-On” (2004) and “Soul Kitchen” (2009).

Political comedy prince Bill Maher will be featured in a new, one-hour HBO comedy special, #Adulting, which will air sometime this spring, exact date TBA. It will debut on the network and will stream on HBO Max.

Sasha Urban editorBill Maher has a new HBO comedy special on the way. Slated for release this spring, “#Adulting” will mark Maher’s 12th special with the network and is scheduled to be taped on March 4 and 5 at the Fillmore Theater in Miami.Maher’s first HBO special dates back to 1989, and he’s since starred in the hour-long presentations “Bill Maher: Live From Oklahoma,” “Bill Maher: Live from D.C.,” “Bill Maher… But I’m Not Wrong,” “Victory Begins at Home,” “Be More Cynical,” “The Golden Goose Special,” “Stuff That Struck Me Funny” and the Emmy-nominated comedy specials “The Decider” and “I’m Swiss.” He also appeared in two half-hour stand-up specials as well as the specials “30 Seconds Over Washington” and “Comic Relief VI.” Maher is best known for hosting the talk show “Real Time with Bill Maher” on HBO, which is currently in its 20th season.

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.

Emiliano Granada Colombian-Canadian director Lina Rodríguez’s third feature, “My Two Voices”,  a 68 min documentary that through its short runtime  artfully orchestrates a polyphony of emotions, colors, textures and voices in its portrayal of three immigrant women.Produced by Canada’s Rayon Verde, the same production company behind her previous film “This Time Tomorrow,” Rodríguez’s meticulous approach interweaves the voices of Claudia Montoya, Marinela Piedrahita and Ana Garay Kostic as they share their experiences of immigrating to Canada. Energized by a rich soundscape, the film achieves a deep intimacy, while refusing to draw borders, between spaces, between voices, between there and here, who I was and who I am, between I and Us.

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.

Ben Croll To follow-up his 2016 debut “Marija,” Swiss filmmaker Michael Koch set his sight skyward, fixing his vision on a remote Alpine farming community both untouched and victim to time. The filmmaker immersed himself in that world, working with village locals, collecting stories and living off the land, and would then channel those experiences into his sophomore feature.Now premiering in competition in Berlin, “A Piece of Sky” follows a taciturn farmhand, Marco (Simon Wisler), and a single mother, Anna (Michèle Brand), who find strength in each other as they build a life in the punishing Alpine range.

Jamie Lang AMC Networks’ genre-focused streaming platform Shudder has acquired the rights to horror maestro Gustavo Hernández’s “Virus: 32” in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K.The deal was closed between Shudder and Pip Ngo from XYZ, CAA Media Finance and Juan Torres from Latido Films. Spanish sales powerhouse Latido is selling the film and has been showing it to buyers at this year’s European Film Market.A high-profile title to track since it was first unveiled at the virtual Cannes Market in 2020, “Virus: 32” stars Paula Silva (“In the Quarry”) and former Berlin Silver Bear winner Daniel Hendler (“Lost Embrace”) in a story about a rapidly spreading virus which transforms people into intelligent, ultra-violent, extra-fast zombie hunters.

Marta Balaga Danish helmer Lone Scherfig is already developing the second season of “The Shift”, she revealed on Monday during an online Berlinale Series Market talk “From Film to Series.”Set in a maternity ward and starring Sofie Gråbøl and Pål Sverre Hagen, it’s the first series as a showrunner for Scherfig, who in 2019 opened Berlinale with “The Kindness of Strangers” and won a Silver Bear for “Italian for Beginners.”“It’s a tribute to the people who work in the healthcare system under extreme pressure, to the care and the love they show, even despite tough working conditions,” she said. “The Shift” is produced by Creative Alliance, with Beta Film handling the sales.

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.

Holly Jones By way of improvisation, relying heavily on events to naturally develop, Argentine filmmaker Gastón Solnicki presents a meandering ode to the city of Vienna, its customs, cultures, facades, and the near-sacrilege of enacting a smoking ban in cafes city-wide.In, “A Little Love Package,” two main protagonists become the vehicles through which the minutiae of everyday life in Vienna unfolds. Experimental aural and visual cues present themselves as Angeliki (Angeliki Papoulia) and Carmen (Carmen Chaplin) seek the perfect apartment in a city suspended in time.Produced by Little Magnet Films, out of Austria, and Solnicki’s Argentine production company, Filmy Wiktora, “A Little Love Package” is the fifth cinematic feature for Solnicki, whose entire catalog was recently acquired by MOMA.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentMemento International has closed major sales on Ursula Meier’s Berlin contender “The Line,” and “Boy from Heaven” by Tarik Saleh, the Swedish-Egyptian helmer of “The Nile Hilton Incident.” A religious and political thriller, “Boy From Heaven” is set in Cairo, in a Koranic school following the collapse of a grand imam which marks the start of a ruthless battle for influence.The movie is headlined by Tawfeek Barhom and Fares Fares, who previously starred in “The Nile Hilton Incident.” Saleh’s Stockholm-based outfit Atmo is producing the movie with Memento. Memento International has sold the film to Benelux (Cineart), Spain (La Aventura), Italy (Movies Inspired), Greece (Cinobo), Hungary (Vertigo) and Middle East (Falcon). Other territories in negotiation.

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.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentAudrey Diwan, the BAFTA-nominated filmmaker of the Venice Golden Lion-winning “Happening,” is set to make her television debut with Haut et Court TV in France, Variety has learned.Haut et Court TV is one of France’s leading production companies with credits ranging from the supernatural drama series “The Returned,” to “Panthers” with Tahar Rahim and more recently “Possession.”Diwan is currently writing the series, which will be an original story about a mother and daughter running a plastic surgery clinic. The plot is under wraps but the series will be similar to “Happening” in that it will deal with women’s relationships to their bodies.

Since her Sundance hit An Education in 2009, Denmark’s Lone Scherfig has become something of an honorary Brit, specializing in prestige adaptations of best-selling English novels (or, in the case of 2014’s The Riot Club, critically acclaimed stage plays). Surprisingly, none of these ever quite tipped in the way An Education did, and after a mixed reaction to One Day (2011), which mostly rounded on Anne Hathaway’s Yorkshire accent rather than her performance, Scherfig’s first real attempt to tap into the American market — 2019’s The Kindness Of Strangers — was an uncharacteristic misfire and pretty much vanished into the ether after opening the Berlinale that year.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentChiara Bellosi, whose first work, “Ordinary Justice,” launched from Berlin’s Generation 14plus section in 2020, is back with “Swing Ride” (“Calcinculo”) about an overweight 15-year-old named Benedetta pining for attention in an Italian province where she falls in love with the skinny non-binary Amanda.A key difference between the two films is that while “Ordinary Justice,” which examined the lives of two families on opposite sides of a murder case, originated from a deeply researched screenplay that Bellosi wrote, “Swing Ride” — premiering in Panorama on Feb. 13 — stems from a prizewinning script proposed to her by Carlo Cresto Dina, her producer, who also discovered Alice Rohrwacher (“Happy as Lazzaro”) and is known for nurturing the cream of Italy’s new cinematic crop.   “It’s a very different process; it was the first time that I had to start from a world that didn’t germinate from me,” said Bellosi about working from the script penned by Maria Teresa Venditti and Luca De Bei that won Italy’s prestigious Solinas prize in 2018.It was like moving into a new house that she had to make her own, she said.“I worked with the writers; I wanted to make a few tweaks and we did that together,” she added, noting that initially “it was a leap into the void.” But directing from their screenplay actually ended up giving her “more freedom” than her previous pic because “the container is already there; but you can go pretty wild with the rest.”This freedom also made it more fun.

Manori Ravindran International EditorMia Wasikowska will take on the lead role in “Little Joe” director Jessica Hausner’s cult thriller “Club Zero,” Variety can reveal.The Australian actor will portray an unusual schoolteacher in Hausner’s second English-language film, which begins shooting in the U.K. and Austria in July.Wasikowska was most recently seen in Mia Hansen-Løve’s Cannes-premiering film “Bergman Island.”In “Club Zero,” Wasikowska’s teacher takes a job at an elite school and forms a strong bond with five students — a relationship that eventually takes a dangerous turn.Discussing the film at the Doha Film Institute’s Qumra event last year, Hausner described the film as “a lot about eating,” relating to eating disorders and “eating behaviors.” This will be Hausner’s sixth feature.

Violence and motherhood make for an unusual combination in Ursula Meier’s Berlin Film Festival competition title The Line (La Ligne). Set in remote present-day Switzerland, it stars actor-singer-playwright Stéphanie Blanchoud as Margaret, whose anger towards her mother Christina (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) frequently turns physical. While she’s a grown woman, there’s something primal and childlike about Margaret’s visceral fury that suggests a disorder that’s never named.

Alissa Simon Film CriticVeteran Swedish documentary maker Magnus Gertten’s “Nelly & Nadine,” a love story that begins in the hell of the Ravensbrück concentration camp, world-premieres in Berlin. Rise and Shine World Sales reps this Panorama title“Nelly & Nadine” is the third film you have made inspired by archival footage showing survivors from German concentration camps arriving in Malmö, Sweden. What motivated you to start this project?  It all started out of curiosity.

Manori Ravindran International EditorIn a year when a festival darling like Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s “Drive My Car” was able to garner four Oscar nominations, including best picture, questions for the Berlin Film Festival jury — which includes Hamaguchi — centered on the role of film festivals in connecting both arthouse and mainstream audiences.Declaring that he “felt like a kid” at the Berlinale, where his jury will be watching 18 films in all, M. Night Shyamalan sat beaming next to Hamaguchi, who is fresh off his Oscar nomination for best director earlier this week.