German police crack down on Berlin organized crime families

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

Thomas Jane tracks down his prey in this exclusive first-look image from upcoming western thriller The Last Son. The film — previously entitled The Last Son of Isaac LeMay and being sold at Berlin's virtual European Film Market by VMI Worldwide, which first announced it at the AFM in 2019 — also stars Sam Worthington, Machine Gun Kelly and Heather Graham.

Guy Lodge Film CriticNow in its 35th year, the Teddy Awards are among the Berlinale’s most affectionately regarded institutions.

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.

BERLIN -- One of Germany's best-known TV directors and scriptwriters has been formally charged with raping an aspiring actress almost 25 years ago, Munich prosecutors said Friday.Dieter Wedel was the first prominent figure in the country named when the #MeToo movement targeting alleged sexual abusers in the media and the arts gathered pace in Germany three years ago.Wedel, 81, has denied claims by several women that he pressured them for sex.The 20-page indictment against Wedel claims that in

You have to wonder when she sleeps. The tireless Maria Schrader — fresh off an Emmy win as outstanding director of a limited series for Netflix's Unorthodox and another critically acclaimed turn in front of the camera as East German spy Lenora Rauch in Amazon's Deutschland 89 — somehow managed, during a pandemic, to shoot her fourth feature film.

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.

The Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain first premiered at the Austin Film Festival in October 2019; a year and a half later, it is heading to Berlin's European Film Market carrying the weight of 2020's racial reckoning. The 80-minute indie, written and directed by David Mindell, follows the final moments of Chamberlain's life.

EXCLUSIVE: Oscar-winner Allison Janney, Schitt’s Creek Emmy winner Annie Murphy and Dear Evan Hansen star Ben Platt are set for The People We Hate At The Wedding. Emmy winner Claire Scanlon (Set It Up) is directing an adaptation of the Grant Ginder novel that is a character-driven wedding comedy that aspires to be a next generation Four Weddings and a Funeral. UTA Independent Film Group is introducing it today at the Virtual Berlin Market.

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.

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.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film WriterLena Dunham just wrapped her first feature film as a writer-director in over a decade.“Sharp Stick,” an indie financed by FilmNation that will screen for potential buyers on Tuesday out of the Berlin International Film Festival, was shot successfully in secret and in compliance with COVID-19 protocols in Los Angeles over the past months.While plot details are under wraps, the film stars Kristine Froseth (“The Assistant,” “Looking for Alaska”), Taylour Paige

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.

Ed Meza @edmezavarWith a strong showing at this year’s Berlin Film Festival that includes the directorial debut of Daniel Brühl and new works by Maria Schrader and Dominik Graf in competition, German films are set to garner much of the spotlight at the accompanying European Film Market.Brühl, who is set to reprise his role as the vengeful Helmut Zemo in the upcoming Marvel series “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” explores the contradictions of present-day Berlin in “Next Door.” The seemingly

Three bright, talented young people in their 20s struggle to find their place in a rotten society, scarred by Germany’s defeat in World War I and menaced by the rising tide of Nazism, in Fabian — Going to the Dogs (Fabian oder Der Gang vor die Hunde.) This second screen adaptation of Erich Kastner’s now classic 1931 novel (the first was directed by Wolf Gremm in 1980) marks a stylistically daring attempt to capture the zeitgeist by director Dominik Graf, who returns to Berlin competition where