'Next Door' ('Nebenan'): Film Review | Berlin 2021

BERLIN -- The manager of a prominent Berlin theater has stepped down in the wake of accusations by women of bullying and sexual harassment.Klaus Doerr announced his resignation from the German capital's Volksbuehne theater on Tuesday.

International buyers have jumped on Maria Schrader's I'm Your Man, and the Daniel Brühl-directed Next Door, both of which premiered in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival last week.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorBerlinale Competition entries from two actors turned directors, Maria Schrader and Daniel Brühl, were among titles on the Beta Cinema slate at the European Film Market to prove popular among international distributors.Schrader, an Emmy Award winner as the director of “Unorthodox,” premiered comic-tragic tale “I’m Your Man,” starring Dan Stevens (“Downton Abbey”), Maren Eggert (“I Was At Home, But…”) and Sandra Hueller (“Toni Erdmann”), at the virtual

Young Europeans' swerve toward the right and far right gets another movie thrown at it with the premiere of Je Suis Karl, from German director Christian Schwochow (November Child, Cracks in the Shell).

Angelique Jackson Tracey Deer, an indigenous filmmaker who hails from the Mohawk Nation, has signed with CAA.Deer recently made her narrative feature debut co-writing and directing the coming-of-age film “Beans,” which captures a young Mohawk girl’s experiences during the 1990s Oka Crisis. The feature debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival and also screened at the Berlin Film Festival, after which FilmRise acquired the U.S.

When filmmaker Maria Speth brought her documentary crew to a provincial German school, her goal was "open-ended observation." Observing a classroom where jam sessions and juggling lessons are as likely as lessons in math and grammar, she achieves that and more with Mr. Bachmann and His Class, one of the most effortlessly absorbing and deeply encouraging nonfiction films of recent memory.

Not long into I'm Your Man, Dan Stevens' character, a genial android named Tom, arranges a perfectly contrived combination of romantic clichés for his would-be partner, Alma. The rose petals are "artfully" strewn, the candles flicker, and flutes of bubbly are ready for sipping beside the bubble-filled tub.

There’s a brief shot early on in Georgian filmmaker Alexandre Koberidze’s wondrous romance and Berlinale competition entry What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Ras vkhedavt, rodesac cas vukurebt?) that might seem to illustrate something quite mundane. The male protagonist’s soccer practice session has ended.

Adding another strong voice to the chorus of anti-capital-punishment films coming out of Iran is Ballad of a White Cow (Ghasideyeh gave sefid), a drama almost entirely centered on the wife of a condemned man who is wrongfully executed for murder in the opening scene.

Japanese writer-director Ryusuke Hamaguchi won wide acclaim and festival prizes with his 2015 breakthrough feature, the bittersweet ensemble drama Happy Hour. But the nuanced, novelistic eye behind that delicately observed five-hour epic seemed to desert Hamaguchi on his 2018 anti-romance Asako I & II, which premiered to lukewarm reviews in Cannes.

In Dasha Nekrasova’s feature directorial debut, The Scary of Sixty-First, New York City is a desolate place. The sky is a muddy beige with no indication of sun.

There's a gorgeous scene early in Petite Maman that epitomizes the unfussy economy and emotional perceptiveness of Céline Sciamma's films. Watching intently from the back seat of the family car as her mother climbs in, stifling tears, and they head off to begin packing up the home of the maternal grandmother who has recently died, the film's 8-year-old protagonist asks permission to break out the snacks.

Despite its simple title, Mexican filmmaker Alonso Ruizpalacios’ latest feature is far from a simple shoot-'em-up cop movie. It’s more like a cop movie written by Jacques Derrida, directed with nods to Wes Anderson and Jean-Luc Godard and then remixed by Abbas Kiarostami in its efforts to tear down the fourth wall.

Halfway through and Berlin's European Film Market is starting to heat up, with a number of deals being signed for finished features. In a pair of domestic acquisitions announced mid-market, Kino Lorber snatched North American rights to Luzzu, Alex Camilleri's directorial debut, which premiered at Sundance, and fellow New York distributor FilmRise took U.S.

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.

Toward the end of Tina, the revealing documentary tribute by Dan Lindsay and T.J. Martin for HBO, Tina Turner is seen in an extended concert clip performing the Beatles' "Help" as a decelerated ballad — intimate, melancholy and full of feeling.

Opening with a very real-looking hardcore sex tape, and climaxing with a deranged orgy featuring super-sized dildos, Romanian writer-director Radu Jude's latest taboo-busting polemical comedy is refreshingly untroubled by tasteful restraint. Shot during COVID lockdown last summer, with cast and crew all wearing anti-viral masks, the snappily titled Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is a scattershot attack on sexual hysteria and political hypocrisy in an era of online slut-shaming.

EXCLUSIVE: New York-based distributor FilmRise has struck a deal with sales firm WaZabi Films for U.S. rights to TIFF 2020 and Berlin 2021 drama Beans.

Most cop movies — and most movies in general — spend the first reel setting up a story that usually kicks off after an “inciting incident,” to quote various screenwriting manuals, which takes place within the first ten or 15 minutes. For the rest of the film, we then watch how that incident unravels and affects the lives of all those involved.

Hungary’s most recent contribution to the implacable flow of war films pouring out of Eastern Europe is a far cry from the Russian tank operas and spectacular disaster films like Battle of Leningrad. Denes Nagy’s sensitive first featureNatural Light (Termeszetes feny), bowing in Berlin competition, is the opposite of these: a slow starter high on atmosphere but low on action, whose horrific main event takes place discreetly off-screen.