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View other Berlin International Film Festival Films by strand: Berlinale Classics, Berlinale Goes Kiez, Berlinale Special, Competition, Culinary Cinema, Generation, Homage, LOLA at Berlinale, NATIVe - Indiginous Cinema, Panorama, Perspektive Deutches Kino, Retrospective: Future Imperfect. Science. Fiction. Film.
Animals and Menashe
2 + 2=22 [The Alphabet]
(Country: Germany; Year: 2017; Director: Heinz Emigholz)
A documentary of the recording sessions for the album ABC by German electronic music group Kreidler in Tblisi, Georgia.
The Aimless Bullet (Obaltan)
(Country: South Korea; Year: 1960; Director: Yoo Hyun-mok; Writer: Lee Beom-seon; Stars: Choi Mu-ryong, Kim Jin-kyu, Moon Jeong-suk)
A man struggles to support his pregnant wife, two children, lonely sister and mentally unstable mother.
Animals (Tiere)
(Country: Switzerland, Austria, Poland; Year: 2017; Director: Greg Zglinski; Writer: Jörg Kalt, Greg Zglinski; Stars: Birgit Minichmayr, Philipp Hochmair, Mona Petri, Mehdi Nebbou, Michael Ostrowski)
Reality starts to shift after a couple take a break to try to rebuild their marriage.
Autumn Autumn
(Country: Republic of Korea; Year: 2016; Director: Jang Woo-jin; Stars: Yang Heung-ju, Lee Se-rang, Woo Ji-hyeon)
A young man and an older couple take a train from Seoul to the small town of Chuncheon. Across two separate threads, the film follows these protagonists to the temple of Cheongpyeong, a place full of memories for them all.
The Barber Of The Poor District (Hallaq darb al-fouqara)
(Country: Morocco; Year: 1982; Director: Mohamed Reggab; Writer: Youssef Fadel; Stars: Mohamed El Habachi, Khadija Khamouli)
As a barber, Miloud is barely able to make ends meet. When his shop is supposed to make way for a Koran school, his friend Hmida encourages him to fight back.
Newton and Werewolf
Barrage
(Country: Luxembourg; Year: 2017; Director: Laura Schroeder; Writer: Marie Nimier, Laura Schroeder; Stars: Isabelle Huppert, Lolita Chammah, Elsa Houben, Themis Pauwels, Luc Schiltz, Marja-Leena Junker, Charles Müller)
Catherine returns to her daughter after ten years away, who’s been raised by her grandmother in the interim.
Bickels [Socialism]
(Country: Germany, Israel; Year: 2017; Director: Heinz Emigholz)
Exploration of the architecture of Samuel Bickels, who designed numerous kibbutz buildings and museums in Israel from the 1950s into the 1970s.
Casa Roshell
(Country: Mexico, Chile; Year: 2017; Director: Camila José Donoso; Stars: Roshell Terranova, Liliana Alba, Lia Garcia, Diego Alberico, Cristian Aravena)
At Club Roshell, men learn to be women during the day, before the parties get going at night. All manner of boundaries blur in this tiny utopia: between gay, straight and bi, male and female, past and present, reality and fiction.
Casting
(Country: Germany; Year: 2017; Director: Nicolas Wackerbarth; Writer: Johannes Held, Nicolas Wackerbarth; Stars: Andrea Sawatzki, Ursina Lardi, Andreas Lust, Corinna Kirchhoff, Markus von Lingen, Marie-Lou Sellem, Stephan Grossmann, Milena Dreißig, Victoria Trauttmansdorff, Toby Ashraf, Judith Engel)
Drama about the casting of a Fassbinder remake.
City Of The Sun
(Country: Georgia; Year: 2017; Director: Rati Oneli; Writer: Dea Kulumbegashvili, Rati Oneli; Stars: Archil Khvedelidze, Zurab Gelashvili, Mariam Pkhaladze, Irina Pkhaladze)
Chiatura was once a proud ore-mining centre but today its remaining inhabitants eke out their livelihoods among the ruins of Soviet ambition.
Golden Exits and Motherland
Davyeon
(Country: US; Year: 2017; Director: Amman Abbasi; Writer: Amman Abbasi, Steven Reneau ; Stars: Devin Blackmon, Kordell "KD" Johnson, Dontrell Bright, Chasity Moore, Lachion Buckingham, Marquell Manning. )
In the wake of his older brother’s death, 13-year-old Dayveon spends the sweltering summer days roaming his rural Arkansas town. When he falls in with a local gang, he becomes drawn to the camaraderie and violence of their world.
Dieste [Uruguay]
(Country: Germany; Year: 2017; Director: Heinz Emigholz)
A documentary about 28 buildings by Uruguayan architect and master of thin shell structures Eladio Dieste.
El Mar La Mar
(Country: US; Year: 2017; Director: Joshua Bonnetta, JP Sniadecki)
The Sonoran Desert between Mexico and the USA: 16mm footage of vegetation, weather phenomena, animals, people and the traces they leave behind merge with a polyphonic soundtrack to create a panoramic study of a highly politicised landscape.
A Feeling Greater Than Love (Shu'our akbar min el hob)
(Country: Lebanon; Year: 2017; Director: Mary Jirmanus Saba)
A study of the possibilities for militant action in both cinema and society.
Foreign Body
(Country: France, Tunisia; Year: 2016; Director: Raja Amari; Writer: Raja Amari; Stars: Hiam Abbass, Sarra Hannachi, Salim Kechiouche, Marc Brunet, Majd Mastoura)
Samia and Imed are living in France illegally. Widow Madame Berteau is an immigrant too, but enjoys wealth and status. Making her acquaintance offers the chance of a residency permit and moving up in the world, resulting in a thorny ménage-à-trois .
Spell Reel and My Happy Family
For Akheem
(Country: US; Year: 2017; Director: Jeremy S Levine, Landon Van Soest)
Daje lives with her mother in St. Louis. Like many black teenagers in the neighbourhood, she struggles in school, as her everyday life is shaken again and again by her friends being killed around her.
Golden Exits
(Country: US; Year: 2017; Director: Alex Ross Perry; Writer: Alex Ross Perry; Stars: Emily Browning, Analeigh Tipton, Chloë Sevigny, Mary-Louise Parker, Lily Rabe, Jason Schwartzman, Adam Horovitz, Craig Butta)
The arrival of a young foreign girl disrupts the lives and emotional balances of two Brooklyn families.
Green River. The Time Of The Yakurunas
(Country: Peru; Year: 2017; Director: Diego E Sarmiento Pagan, Álvaro Sarmiento; Writer: Álvaro Sarmiento; Stars: Julio Renerio, Custodio Sangama, Samuel Sangama, Andrea Sinarahua, Albina Tapullima)
Documentary travels to the Peruvian Amazon to examine the lives of its indigenous inhabitants.
House In The Fields (Tigmi Nigren)
(Country: Morocco; Year: 2016; Director: Tala Hadid; Stars: Khadija Elgounad, Fatima Elgounad)
Documents the last summer spent together by two sisters in a Berber village in the Atlas Mountains.
Inmates (Qui)
(Country: China; Year: 2017; Director: Ma Li)
Everyday life in a closed psychiatric clinic in northern China: shot over a period of one year.
Davyeon and The Aimless Bullet
Lady Of The Lake
(Country: India; Year: 2016; Director: Haobam Paban Kumar; Writer: Sudhir Naoroibam; Stars: Ningthoujam Sanatomba)
Loktak Lake in north-eastern India is a place of unique natural beauty, but now resettlement plans threaten its inhabitants’ everyday existence.
The Last Witness (Choehuui jeung-in)
(Country: South Korea; Year: 2016; Director: Lee Doo-yong; Writer: Kim Sang-Jung; Stars: Hah Myung-joong, Jeong Yun-hui, Choi Bool-am, Hyun Kil-soo, Han Hye-sook)
A detective is entrusted with reopening an unsolved murder case, with the trail of evidence leading all the way back to the Korean War.
Loving Pia (At elske Pia)
(Country: Denmark; Year: 2017; Director: Daniel Borgman; Writer: Daniel Borgman; Stars: Pia Skovgaard, Céline Skovgaard, Jens Jensen)
A 60-year-old intellectually disabled woman embarks on her first relationship with a man.
Low Tide (Motza El Hayam)
(Country: Israel; Year: 2017; Director: Daniel Mann; Writer: Daniel Mann; Stars: Susanne Gschwendtner, Gal Hoyberger, Amit Bar-am)
After losing his job and an unhappy divorce, a history teacher signs up as a reserve soldier, yet keeps putting off his period of duty, while a foreign journalist is looking for a way to get to Gaza. The story of two drifters in a land at constant war.
Mama Colonel (Maman Colonelle)
(Country: DRC; Year: 2017; Director: Dieudo Hamadi)
Honorine is affectionately referred to as Maman Colonelle and heads a Congolese police unit whose task is to protect women and children.
Menashe
(Country: US; Year: 2017; Director: Joshua Z Weinstein; Writer: Joshua Z Weinstein, Alex Lipschultz, Musa Syeed; Stars: Menashe Lustig, Ruben Niborski, Yoel Weisshaus), Trailer
A man faces losing custody of his son after the death of his wife.
The Mirage (Al-Sarab)
(Country: Morocco; Year: 1980; Director: Ahmed Bouanani; Stars: Mohamed Habachi, Mohamed Saïd Afifi, Fatima Regragul)
When the jobless Mohamed finds a roll of banknotes, it turns out to be more of a curse than a blessing: his attempts to exchange the money lead to surreal encounters and culminate in an endless, dream-like odyssey.
Motherland
(Country: US, Philippines; Year: 2017; Director: Ramona Diaz)
The planet's busiest maternity hospital is located in one of its poorest and most populous countries: the Philippines. There, poor women face devastating consequences as their country struggles with reproductive health policy and the politics of conservative Catholic ideologies.
My Happy Family
(Country: Georgia; Year: 2016; Director: Nana Ekvtimishvili, Simon Groß; Writer: Nana Ekvtimishvili; Stars: Ia Shugliashvili, Merab Ninidze, Berta Khapava, Tsisia Qumsishvili, Giorgi Tabidze, Dimitri Oragvelidze)
Tbilisi, Georgia, 2016: In a patriarchal society, an ordinary Georgian family lives with three generations under one roof. All are shocked when 52-year-old Manana decides to move out from her parents' home and live alone. Without her family and her husband, a journey into the unknown begins.
Newton
(Country: India; Year: 2017; Director: Amit Masurkar; Writer: Amit Masurkar, Mayank Tewari; Stars: Rajkummar Rao, Pankaj Tripathy, Anjali Patil, Raghuvir Yadav, Mukesh Prajapati)
A young bureaucrat named Newton is sent to the jungle to monitor an election there. But Maoist blockades, forced police protection and indifferent voters make defending democracy no easy task.
Occidental
(Country: France; Year: 2017; Director: Neïl Beloufa; Stars: Anna Ivacheff, Idir Chender, Paul Hamy, Louise Orry-Diquéro, Hamza Meziani, Brahim Tekfa, Françoise Cousin, Pierre Rousselet, Brune Renault, Geoffrey Carey)
As protests rage on the Paris streets, two suspicious men rent the bridal suite at the Hotel Occidental.
Oh the Days! (Alyam, Alyam)
(Country: Morocco; Year: 1978; Director: Ahmed El Maanouni; Writer: Ahmed El Maanouni; Stars: Ben Brahim)
Following death of his father, Abdelwahed hopes to support his nine-person family by working in France. As the visa fails to appear, the everyday life and lack of perspectives in rural Morocco come into focus.
Open Wounds – A Journey Through German Genre Films (Offene Wunde deutscher Film)
(Country: Germany; Year: 2017; Director: Dominik Graf, Johannes F Sievert)
A journey through the German cinema of the Sixties to the Nineties.
Org
(Country: Italy, Argentina; Year: 1979; Director: Fernando Birri; Writer: Fernando Birri, based on a story by Thomas Mann; Stars: Terence Hill, Lidija Juracik, Isaac Twen Obu, Nolika Pareda, Pietro Santalamazza, Francesco Di Giacomo, Julio García Espinosa, Jean-Luc Godard, Herbert Marcuse, Jonas Mekas, Glauber Rocha, Roberto Rossellini)
Experimental "non-film".
Railway Sleepers (Mon Rot Fai)
(Country: Thailand; Year: 2017; Director: Sompot Chidgasornpongse; Stars: Francois Langello)
Thailand’s first railway line was opened in 1980. This observational documentary breaks down the two-day journey from north to south.
Rifle
(Country: Brazil, Germany; Year: 2016; Director: Davi Pretto; Writer: Davi Pretto, Richard Tavares; Stars: Dione Avila De Oliveira, Evaristo Pimentel Goularte, Francisco Fabrício Dutra dos Santos, Sofia Ferreira, Andressa Nogueira Goularte)
A taciturn former soldier is employed to guard a small landholder’s estate. When an agricultural company seeks to buy up the land, he reacts in drastic fashion.
Rustlers (Cuarteros)
(Country: Argentina; Year: 2016; Director: Albertina Carri)
The life of Isidro Velázquez.
The Sea Stares At Us From Afar (El mar nos mira de lejos)
(Country: Spain, Netherlands; Year: 2017; Director: Manuel Muñoz Rivas)
Past and present flow together in this documentary portrait of a coastal landscape and its inhabitants.
Simulation (Tamaroz)
(Country: Iran; Year: 2017; Director: Abed Abest)
Three uninvited friends, an unwilling host, a gun: at the police station later, each will give their own version of what actually happened on the drunken evening.
somniloquies
(Country: US, UK, France; Year: 2017; Director: Verena Paravel, Lucien Castaing-Taylor)
Exploration of the liminal state between wakefulness and dream.
So Long Enthusiasm (Adiós entusiasmo)
(Country: Argentina, Colombia; Year: 2017; Director: Vladimir Durán; Stars: Camilo Castiglione, Laila Maltz, Mariel Fernandez, Martina Juncadella, Rosario Blefari)
Ten-year-old Axel lives with his mother and three sisters in a flat in Buenos Aires. If the mother weren’t imprisoned in one of the rooms, they’d be a perfectly normal family. Arguments are hardly unusual, but what happens when there’s no way out?
Spell Reel
(Country: Germany, Portugal, France, Guinea-Bissau; Year: 2017; Director: Filipa César)
Experimental documentary about a cinema movement involved in the Guinea-Bissau liberation movement.
Strange Birds
(Country: France; Year: 2017; Director: Élise Girard; Writer: Élise Girard, Anne-Louise Trividic; Stars: Lolita Chammah, Jean Sorel, Virginie Ledoyen, Pascal Cervo, Bellu Bellali, Nicolas Combet, Max Robin, Ronald Chammah, Tullio Giannotti, Stefano Montefiori, Angelo Laudisa, Mouloud Gali, Ronan Mallejac, Léonie Chanteloup, Cyril Robin)
Mavie moves to Paris from the provinces. After seeing an ad in a café, she lands both a flat and a job from Georges, a cynical old bookshop owner who’s never actually sold a book.
Streetscapes [Dialogue]
(Country: Germany; Year: 2017; Director: Heinz Emigholz)
A fictionalised dialogue between a film director and his therapist, based on the protocols of Emigholz’s own psychoanalysis sessions and filmed in buildings by Julio Vilamajó, Eladio Dieste and Arno Brandlhuber in Uruguay und Berlin.
The Theatre Of Disappearance (El teatro de la desaparición)
(Country: Argentina; Year: 2017; Director: Adrián Villar Rojas)
The surreal daily life on the border between North and South Korea, a pottery in Morocco, art spaces, industrial facilities, far-flung landscapes: a mysterious survey of the earth and all it holds which observes and invents in equal measure.
Three Lights (Mittsu no hikari)
(Country: Japan; Year: 2017; Director: Kohki Yoshida; Stars: Ryo Ikeda, Hiroshi Suzuki, Kazuha Komiya, Emi Maki, Natsumi Ishibashi)
Four people alienated from their everyday lives come together, generating hope that things might now be different. They decide to record a song in a studio on an industrial estate, but one of them then threatens the harmony of this fragile community.
Tinselwood
(Country: France; Year: 2017; Director: Marie Voignier)
Documentary tracking residents of south-east Cameroon.
The Tokyo Night Sky Is Always The Densest Shade Of Blue (Yozora wa itsudemo saikô mitsudo no aoiro da)
(Country: Japan; Year: 2017; Director: Yûya Ishii; Writer: Tahi Saihate, Yûya Ishii; Stars: Ryûhei Matsuda, Sôsuke Ikematsu, Mikako Ichikawa, Takahiro Miura, Paul Magsign, Ryô Satô, Shizuka Ishibashi, Tetsuji Tanaka)
Is the moon really only this blue in Tokyo and why doesn’t anyone else see it? Shinji and Mika would both say they’re strange and chance brings them together again and again.
Traces (Wechma)
(Country: Morocco; Year: 1972; Director: Hamid Benani; Stars: Mohamed Alkaghat, Tawfik Dadda, Khadija Moujahid, Abdelkader Moutaa)
An rebellious youngster ends up on the wrong side of the tracks.
Werewolf
(Country: Canada; Year: 2016; Director: Ashley McKenzie; Writer: Ashley McKenzie; Stars: Andrew Gillis, Kyle M. Hamilton, Bhreagh MacNeil)
Two methadone users struggle to escape from their desperate day-to-day situation.
59th New York Film Festival early bird highlights Futura, Jane By Charlotte, James Baldwin: From Another Place and The Velvet Underground
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