Latest in Berlin Film Festival

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.  Last Swim debuted last week at the Berlin Film Festival, where it opened the…

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. In decades past, Scorsese touched down in Berlin with major works such as Raging Bull (1981), Cape Fear (1992); Gangs o…

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…

A hippopotamus is a semi-aquatic animal native to sub-Saharan Africa. However, in the early 1990s, hippos and other wild animals ran amok in South America, thanks to drug lord Pablo Escobar and the exotic menagerie at his Hacienda Nápoles estate. After his death, the animals were left to their own…

"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), meanwhile, is carousing with his fellow…

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…

EXCLUSIVE: Swedish Filmmaker Gustav Möller made a lot of waves with his debut feature, The Guilty, which was adapted by Antoine Fuqua with an English-language cast including Jake Gyllenhaal.  Möller has now returned to feature filmmaking Sons (Vogter), which debuts this week in competition at the…

The Berlin Film Festival was rocking Wednesday afternoon as Adam Sandler rolled into town with Spaceman, his latest feature for Netflix.  The Uncut Gems actor and his co-stars, including Carey Mulligan and Paul Dano, received buoyant rounds of applause as they entered the press conference for the…

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…

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…

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. Martin Scorsese received Berlin's Honorary Golden Bear on stage alongside German filmmaker Wim…

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. Sy stars along with Yasmin Al Massri in…