Spanish Films To Track in Berlin

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Holly Jones Amongst a slate of auspicious Brazilian films and series featuring in Berlin, “Cidade; Campo”– the latest from arthouse helmer Juliana Rojas – saw its world premiere on Monday, screening as part of the Encounters strand that aims “to foster aesthetically and structurally daring works from independent, innovative filmmakers,” according to the fest. Backed by Brazil’s Dezenove Som e Imagem and Globo Filmes in tandem with France’s Good Fortune Films and Germany’s Sutor Kolonko, the loosely mystical narrative tells two disparate relocation stories fused by longing, grief and a rousing aesthetic.

Mubi has snapped up rights across multiple territories on Made In England: The Films Of Powell And Pressburger, the Martin Scorsese-narrated doc set to debut this week at the Berlin Film Festival. 

Alex Ritman ‘Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger,’ the documentary produced and narrated by Matin Scorsese, has been acquired by Mubi ahead of the film’s world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival. The arthouse streamer, distributor and production company has bought all rights for Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Latin America, Turkey and India.

Kristen Stewart is in Berlin this weekend for the international premiere of her lesbian crime-thriller Love Lies Bleeding.

Ellise Shafer At the Berlin Film Festival press conference for her new film “Love Lies Bleeding,” Kristen Stewart said she thinks the era of queer films “being so pointedly only that is done,” adding that it’s time for films to focus on “sidelined perspectives” while “not making it all about the reasons that they’re sidelined.” “Love Lies Bleeding” stars Stewart as reclusive gym manager Lou, who “falls hard for Jackie (Katy O’Brian), an ambitious bodybuilder headed through town to Las Vegas in pursuit of her dream,” the film’s synopsis reads. “But their love ignites violence, pulling them deep into the web of Lou’s criminal family.” When asked if filming the gory and twist-filled “Love Lies Bleeding” had changed her perspective on how queer stories are centered in cinema, Stewart sounded off on the topic.

When Australian writer Lily Brett published her novel Too Many Men in 2001, critics marvelled at the light, comic tone she had managed to strike in a novel about the lasting impact of the Holocaust, passed down from one generation to the next. Families have their customary jokes; they squabble over the dinner table; they may be funny characters but, underneath it all, there is a consciousness of pain. That’s not an easy balance to strike, as a writer or as an actor.

What would you do if you could extend loved ones’ lives through their memories?

“This is a very, very romantic film,” Gael García Bernal said of his Berlin competition title, Another End. 

Callum McLennan Going into Berlin’s European Film Market, Spain’s biggest sales agents are under no illusion just how tough international markets have become. “Paradoxically, in one of the best moments for Spanish productions, we are finding that some of our top dramas are getting hard to sell unless selected in Cannes, Venice or Berlin,” says Latido Films CEO Antonio Saura. Also, “If American productions dominate at least 80% of markets, and local productions claim about half what remains.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Taiwan-based auteur Tsai Ming-liang, who has two films in the Berlinale this year, is a contrarian who would be almost at home working with art-galleries and museums as cinemas and film festivals. Indeed, his new “Abiding Nowhere” is part financed by the Smithsonian Institute. “Abiding Nowhere,” which premieres on Monday in the Encounters section and consists of lonely wanderings through Washington DC by a barefoot monk, is, by Tsai’s own admission, “not a normal film.” “It does not have a story or a plot.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent A new film industry superclass is emerging in Spain: movies powered or co-backed by its streaming giants. Perhaps the biggest example, Netflix Spain’s Andes flight disaster “Society of the Snow,” scored two Academy Award nominations last month. Now, in the run-up to Berlin, London-based Film Constellation has acquired most world sales rights to “The Captive,” from Oscar winner Alejandro Amenábar (“The Sea Inside”) and Mod Producciones, a $15 million period adventure epic on the literary makings of “Quixote”author Miguel de Cervantes, held to ransom in a Moorish corsair jail.