2011-2020

A group of Yokohama teens look to save their school’s clubhouse from the wrecking ball in preparations for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.Read More »

In a fateful bumper car collision, Jake and Ella meet and become the most loving couple in the long history of romance. But when a scheming “other” woman drives a wedge of jealousy into their perfect courtship, insecurity and hatred spell out an untimely fate. With only the help of a disgraced magician and his forbidden “soul machine”, Ella takes the form of Jake’s numerous lovers, desperately fighting through the malfunction and deceit as they try to reclaim their destiny.Read More »

A young woman works as a prison guard in a hopelessly overcrowded jail in central Madagascar. She passes the time daydreaming about her father, a murderer, who abandoned her as a child after killing his own brother. In her imagination, her father becomes a mythical killer, wandering the countryside and rolling enchanted dice to decide the fate of his victims. Secretly, she yearns for the day her father will turn up amongst the prisoners. When a new inmate arrives claiming to know her father, her fantasies begin to turn to nightmares.Read More »

Cat in the Wall tells the true story of how a cat, stuck in a wall, changes the lives of aspirational migrants, benefit fraudsters and gentrified Brexiteers.

As documentarians, Mina Mileva and Vesela Kazakova have always been fearless. The duo’s rage permeates their first foray into fiction, Cat in the Wall. An examination of society’s absurdities and unfairness through the eyes of Irina, a single Bulgarian mother whose place in London is challenged in every way, turning her into a metaphoric “cat in the wall”, just like the real one.Read More »

Don’t we all feel the same longing for German films that break ranks, that are wild and sensual, that possess a true physicality? Dominik Graf’s thrillers, the articles he’s written on cinema and his new documentary all tell of this longing. What happened to this section of our film tradition, which in the 1970s and 80s brought forth a genre cinema that showed a very different Germany, one looking into the abyss?
Even before Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, there were reflections of neon signs in nocturnal streets and a dark angel who wanted to rescue a prostitute in Roland Klick’s Supermarkt (1973). Klaus Lemke and Roland Klick sit before Graf’s camera as nonchalantly as their heroes and rave about how actors who make full use of their bodies. At first, post-war Germany did not want maimed bodies sweaty with exertion, until Mario Adorf and Klaus Kinski brought back the need for the physical. Suddenly, there was space for violent, bloody and dirty stories, with the RAF’s first department store bomb reverberating through films such as Blutiger Freitag (1972). This is another way of telling German history. [Berlinale.de]Read More »

We already know just how wild, unpredictable, sensual, audacious and bursting with life German cinema can be from the film essay Verfluchte Liebe deutscher Film. Now Dominik Graf and Johannes Sievert continue their archaeological adventure tour to the margins, the underbelly, but also to the heart of German film and television, posing some valid questions along the way: why does public television no longer commission such prescient science fiction films as Smog (1973)? Why isn’t German cinema able to establish a more audacious relationship to genre? As in Carl Schenkel’s Abwärts (1984), for example, all it takes is a lift that gets stuck in an office building to make a claustrophobic psycho-thriller. Why do young directors not follow in the footsteps of the unruly Klaus Lemke, who simply shoots his films from the hip? And why do those who do get denied funding? The excerpts from these film and television marvels – such as Slavers – Die Sklavenjäger or Liebling – Ich muss dich erschießen – certainly make one want to run out and see them at once. Sadly, in many cases all that’s left of these lost treasures are the trailers or posters.[Berlinale.de]Read More »

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An intersectional narrative of two families in Brooklyn and the unraveling of unspoken unhappiness that occurs when a young foreign girl spending time abroad upsets the balance on both sides.Read More »

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António runs away from home and tries to spend the night at his ex-girlfriend’s apartment. There he finds a Brazilian girl, an unexpected guest. Johnny is struggling to stage his first theater play in Lisbon. His friendship with the young light technician will make him face his real problems. Débora is passing by, finally returning home. When she goes to the theater, she falls asleep, and is awaken by the protagonist. Three dimensions of the same story.Read More »

Based on video recordings from the American and the French armed forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria… The film diverts these propaganda images and show how far the desire to see can lead to, when it is used without limit.Read More »