Berlin Showbiz Latest News and Updates

It’s very easy to misread the title of Victor Kossakovsky’s latest documentary as “Architection,” since it is, in some ways, a detective story about the world we live in, albeit one in which it is very easy to figure out whodunit (spoiler: we did it to ourselves). The actual title, Architecton, is a Greek word that means “master builder,” and the film plays with the irony of what that may mean — pitting the “master builders” of yesteryear against the “master builders“ of today — from the very beginning, using a cryptic line from “L’aquilone,” a rumination on bygone times by Italian poet Giovanni Pascoli (1855-1912). “There is something new within the sun today, or rather ancient,” he writes. This fascinating, engrossing film interrogates the subtext of this seemingly paradoxical statement.

With his debut feature Last Swim, an ambitious and quietly radical portrait of young life in London, Sasha Nathwani has achieved one of the most difficult tasks for a new filmmaker: cutting through with a festival audience. 

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.

Anatomy of a Fall French producer Marie-Ange Luciani put in a flying appearance at the Berlinale this week with Claire Burger’s coming-of-age drama Langue Étrangère which received a warm reception in competition.

Justin Timberlake just debuted his third new song, “Drown” on Friday (February 22)!

From his breakthrough work Family Viewing, which dates back to 1987, Atom Egoyan has been exploring the possibilities of different communication technologies by showing screens within screens, stories within other stories and the ways unconnected stories may merge with each other and with real life. Seven Veils is named for the Biblical character Salome, whose seductive dancing as she shed those veils earned her a grisly prize: the severed head of John the Baptist, the ascetic prophet who predicted the coming of Jesus Christ.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief In Berlin with “The Roundup: Punishment,” part four of the action movie series that he created and stars in, the larger-than-life Korean American Don Lee finds himself simultaneously in multiple timely and lucrative businesses. These include the Marvel superhero business, the Korea-to-Hollywood remake business, “The Roundup” franchise and its multiple spinoff possibilities. Lee may even be in the business of saving Korean cinema, which is currently having one of its periodic wobbles.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Hong Kong director Ray Yeung ‘s “All Shall Be Well” has sold in several key markets following its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival. Represented in international markets by Films Boutique, “All Shall Be Well” is playing in the Panorama section at the Berlinale and is eligible for the Teddy Award.

Berlin’s European Film Market (EFM) has posted a record of number of visitors for its 2024 edition, with more than 12,000 professionals from 143 countries attending this year.

Imagine a movie akin to a sad David Bowie song about an astronaut drifting alone into the dark abyss of space, contemplating his life, his lost love, his past, and an uncertain, perhaps soon-to-be-shortly doomed future. Sing the wistfully estranged and reflective “Space Odyssey” tune and the lamenting iconic line, “Tell my wife I love her very much, she knows!” That’s Swedish filmmaker Johan Renck’s “Spaceman” in a nutshell, which makes for possibly the weirdest, most existentially lonely movie Adam Sandler has ever starred in.

Guy Lodge Film Critic With the possible exception of “Tora! Tora! Tora!,” any film with an exclamation point in the title should by rights be a spangly, full-scale musical. A frothy tale of warring classical music sensibilities in a Venetian girls’ refuge, “Gloria!” stops short of complete commitment to that rule — but it’s when it fully suspends reality for all-singing, all-stamping choral ecstasy that Margherita Vicario‘s uneven debut is most exciting.

Ellise Shafer Amanda Seyfried reflected on being cast as a mother at the Berlin Film Festival press conference for her new film “Seven Veils,” saying that “it seems like once I popped out a baby, I was just playing mothers.” However, the mom of two does feel the roles she’s been given have “become way richer.” In “Seven Veils,” Seyfried plays Jeanine, a theater director who is forced to deal with repressed trauma as she prepares a production of the opera “Salome.” When asked if she related to the character, Seyfried said she sympathized with Jeanine’s struggles as a mother. “In my career, it’s still a bit new to play a mother.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Sebastian Stan, whose “A Different Man” screens in the Berlin Film Festival, Christoph Waltz and Tom Wlaschiha, the “Faceless Man” in “Game of Thrones,” were among the guests at Studio Babelsberg Night, the historic Berlin film studios’ party at Soho House Berlin held to celebrate the 74th edition of the festival. The event was supported by Mexican tequila brand Don Julio, the Motion Picture Assn. and Little Moons.

Naman Ramachandran Nepali filmmaker Min Bahadur Bham‘s journey to make Berlin competition title “Shambhala” was arduous but an ultimately rewarding one. Bham’s 2012 short “Bhansulli” debuted at Venice. His debut feature “Kalo Pothi” (aka “The Black Hen,” 2015) won the Fedeora best film award at Venice Critics’ Week and became Nepal’s official Oscar entry.

“Please make me a good wife to Wolf,” murmurs Agnes (Anja Plaschg) on her marriage night, head bowed in front of the crucifix she has already set up in the conjugal bedroom of the tumbledown stone farmhouse where she will live from now on. Wolf (David Scheid) is meanwhile carousing with his fellow villagers at the wedding celebration, in no hurry to join her. We are deep in the Austrian forest in the 1750s, where life is governed by the cruelties of each season and everything has its place. The point of a woman is to work and have children; anyone who fails in these conjoined vocations is simply a dead weight. Agnes will do her best, but her airy spirits are soon sinking.

Apple TV's new prestige drama series The New Look features a soundtrack that's assembled and produced by Jack Antonoff, the in-demand pop savant who just won at the 2024 Grammys for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical (his third Grammy in that category and 10th overall). The soundtrack collects covers of classic songbook standards from modern pop giants, and today's track comes from Perfume Genius, the singer-songwriter born Mike Hadreas.

For a time, it seemed like an auteur war was about to break out over Adam Sandler, with some of America’s most revered directors vying to find the right role for the comedian. It was rumored, but never confirmed, that Quentin Tarantino imagined him a key role while writing Inglourious Basterds, although this might have been wishful thinking from critics who saw the talented Sandler heading in the same direction as John Travolta until Pulp Fiction saved him from a lifetime of Look Who’s Talking movies. In the end, Paul Thomas Anderson got there first, with Punch Drunk Love (2002), although the glow of a bona fide arthouse hit didn’t last long, and Jack and Jill still happened less than ten years later.

Usher has added two more London shows to his 2025 European tour. Find ticket details below.The dates come as part of the R&B icon’s upcoming ‘Past Present Future’ tour, which is set to commence in the US later this year and will see him play shows across the globe over 12 months.The European leg of the world tour is set to start next April, following a string of tour dates across North America throughout 2024.

Alan Ritchson (Reacher) and Kevin James (The King of Queens) have been set to lead action-comedy Playdate, which will be directed by Luke Greenfield (The Girl Next Door) from a script written by Neil Goldman (Shrinking).

EXCLUSIVE: Ahead of its world premiere today at the Berlin Film Festival, Cohen Media Group has secured all North American distribution rights to Made In England: The Films Of Powell And Pressburger.

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).

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian singer-songwriter Margherita Vicario’s directorial debut “Gloria!” has scored a slew international sales ahead of its world premiere in the Berlin Film Festival competition. RAI Cinema International Distribution has sealed deals to nine territories on Vicario’s vibrant musical comedy set in a late 18th century Venetian female orphanage where a young rebel named Teresa leads a group of performers to challenge classical canons and invent a precursor to pop music.

Ellise Shafer Adam Sandler was faced with a new challenge on the set of his upcoming Netflix film “Spaceman“: using wires to appear like an astronaut floating in space. At the film’s Berlin Film Festival press conference on Wednesday, Sandler cheekily reflected on the experience, saying the “wires hurt me.” “The wires were tough because my body’s not the most flexible body. The wires hurt me, they dug into me.

The Berlin Film Festival was rocking Wednesday afternoon as Adam Sandler rolled into town with Spaceman, his latest feature for Netflix. 

It’s not often that a doc about the transformative power of cinema will deliberately use bad clips of the movies it’s talking about, but that’s part of the point of this insightful, sprawling film, corralled by director David Hinton. Though the masterpieces made by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger at the height of their big-screen, Technicolor powers were visually impeccable, their subversive emotional power could still pack a punch through a 16-inch TV screen, even from the most scratched, butchered, and washed-out black-and-white prints.

Naman Ramachandran A key audience participation segment of the London West End adaptation of Henrik Ibsen‘s 1882 play “An Enemy of the People” left people in tears, star Matt Smith told the BBC. In “An Enemy of the People,” when Dr. Stockmann (Smith) makes an unbelievable discovery about the healing waters in his local baths, he holds the future of the town in his hands, but those with everything to lose refuse to accept his word.

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.

Christopher Vourlias Abel Ferrara has made a career out of staring unflinchingly into the abyss, interrogating man’s weakness and depravity and daring his audiences to look away. Faced with the catastrophic violence of the war in Ukraine, however, which he chronicles in the Berlin-premiering documentary “Turn in the Wound,” even the iconoclastic director finds himself at a loss — for words, and for easy answers.

Mahin’s friend Pouran likes talking about her ailments, real and imagined. More than that, she has something on her phone she is keen to show the ladies gathered for one of their regular lunches at Mahin’s place: the film she made of her colonoscopy. “That’s disgusting,” snorts Mahin (Lily Farhadpour). “I told her to marry! You wouldn’t be like this if you had!” Another of their wrinkly gang chips in. “What joy did our dead husbands ever bring us?” They all laugh, companionably.

Ellise Shafer Martin Scorsese was lauded with the Berlin Film Festival‘s honorary Golden Bear on Tuesday night, celebrating a lifetime of achievement in cinema. As he accepted the award, Scorsese — whose most recent film, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” is currently up for 10 Oscars — reflected on his career thus far and even teased a return to the festival “in a couple years.” Scorsese was introduced by German director Wim Wenders, who is also Oscar-nominated for his latest feature, “Perfect Days.” Wenders told a hilarious story, complete with a photo slideshow, about one of his earliest interactions with Scorsese at the Telluride Film Festival in 1978, where he came upon the director and his then-girlfriend Isabella Rossellini on the side of the road with a flat tire.

EXCLUSIVE: Beloved French actor Omar Sy stars in the debut feature from longtime producer Brandt Andersen in The Strangers’ Case, a searing and international ensemble that is world premiering at the Berlin Film Festival on Friday. Watch an exclusive clip above.

EXCLUSIVE: Cinetic Media has signed award-winning Iranian filmmaker Babak Jalali (Fremont, Land) for management across all media.

Martin Scorsese was presented with the Berlin Film Festival’s Honorary Golden Bear for Lifetime Achievement on Tuesday evening, with old friend German director Wim Wenders paying a warm personal tribute to the director.

Rocco Siffredi claims that after making roughly 1,400 hardcore films — with titles like “The Ass Collector” and “Rocco’s Perfect Slaves” — over the past four decades, he has finally found “the peace of his senses.” “I could crack a bad joke and say I can’t get it up anymore,” says Siffredi, 59, speaking on a video call from the Budapest office of his Rocco Siffredi Production company, which houses the Siffredi Hard Academy, touted as the world’s first “university of porn.” “But that’s not the case. Quite the contrary,” the hardworking “Italian Stallion” hastens to add. I’ve asked Siffredi about being — or having notoriously been — a sex addict.

Ellise Shafer Martin Scorsese expanded upon his opinions on the current state of cinema during a press conference at the Berlin Film Festival, where he is receiving an Honorary Golden Bear. When asked if cinema could be dying, Scorsese said he prefers to think of the industry as “transforming.” “I don’t think it’s dying at all, no. I think it’s transforming,” Scorsese said.