A popular fixture in the movie industry calender, the Berlin Film Festival, which opens tomorrow, is divided into a number of sections, including the Competition, where big international features vie for the prestigious Golden Bear and Silver Bears; Panorama, offering independent and art house movies; and Forum and Forum Expanded, bringing together the experimental, the avant garde and the unusual.
Middle East
The Iranian filmmaker Mitra Farahani will be part of this year’s international jury awarding the Bears for the Competition, whose line up includes Macondo (Austria), the first dramatic feature from the Vienna-based Iranian Sudabeh Mortezai, and Two Men in Town (France/Algeria/US/Belgium), directed by Rachid Bouchareb and starring Forest Whitaker. Based on a 1973 French psychological drama of the same name, Bouchareb’s film is the first part of an English-language trilogy exploring relations between the West and the Arab world.
Also selected for Competition, In-between Worlds was secretly shot in the Mazar-e-Sharif and Kunduz regions in Afghanistan by the Austrian director Feo Aladag and her mainly female crew, and tells the story of a German soldier and a local interpreter.
Screening in Panorama are I’m Not Angry, from Iran’s Reza Dormishian, and a documentary about Heinrich Himmler, The Decent One (Israel/Austria/Germany), from the first-time director Vanessa Lapa. Two documentaries exploring the recent upheavals in Egypt – Jehane Noujaim’s Oscar-nominated The Square (US/Egypt) and Viola Shafik’s Scent of Revolution (Egypt/Germany) – get special screenings in Forum.
That section also includes Iranian (France/Switzerland), Mehran Tamadon’s exploration of the lives of European exiles from Iran, and Melisa Onel’s Seaburners (Turkey).
Gheith Al-Amine’s The Sheikh Imam Project (Lebanon), Monira Al Qadiri’s Behind the Sun (Kuwait), Roy Dib’s Mondial 2010 (Lebanon), Ahmed Mater’s Leaves Fall in All Seasons (Saudi Arabia), Maha Maamoun’s Shooting Stars Remind Me of Eavesdroppers (Egypt), Joe Namy’s Half Step (Lebanon), Jasmina Metwaly’s From Behind of the Monument (Egypt) are all short films that feature in Forum Expanded.
India
Indian cinema is represented in Panorama by Papilio Buddha (India/United States), Jayan Cherian’s story of a group of displaced Dalits in the Western Ghats of India, and the road movie Highway (India), in which the filmmaker Imtiaz Ali continues to move away from the traditional Bollywood song-and-dance format.
Avinash Arun’s coming-of-age tale The Fort (India), the love story The Honour Keeper (India), directed by Pushpendra Singh, and Gaurav Saxena’s Rangzen (India) will play in the youth-orientated Generation, Forum and Generation Kplus short sections respectively, while Forum Expanded hosts screenings of Kush Badhwar’s Blood Earth (India) and Shambhavi Kaul’s Mount Song (India/US).
Opening night
The world premiere of Wes Anderson’s latest stylised comedy, The Grand Budapest Hotel, supplies the Berlinale curtain-raiser. Filmed in Germany, the movie has a stunning ensemble cast featuring, among others, Ralph Fiennes, Tilda Swinton, Léa Seydoux, Bill Murray and Owen Wilson.
Murray will also be seen in George Clooney’s The Monuments Men – a Second World War drama based on the true story of a platoon tasked with rescuing art looted by the Nazis.
Art house and auteurs
A sure-fire hot ticket, the long, uncut version of the arch-provocateur Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac Volume I will receive its world premiere in Berlin. Likely to get pulses racing for a different reason is Richard Linklater’s Boyhood. Already a hit at Sundance, the film was shot over 12 years and is eagerly anticipated by fans of the writer-director.
Alain Resnais, still making films in his 90s, disproves the idea that directing is a young man’s game with Life of Riley. Calvary, the writer-director John Michael McDonagh and the actor Brendan Gleeson’s follow-up to The Guard, should provide plenty of sardonic laughs, while Michel Gondry’s encounter with Noam Chomsky in Is the Man Who is Tall Happy? is bound to be food for thought.
Special screenings
Berlin offers a number of special screenings, one of the most popular of which could be the South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer. The film attracted more than 9.3 million movie- goers domestically and casts Tilda Swinton, Jamie Bell, Chris Evans and Song Kang-ho as the last survivors of a new ice age, passengers on a train they believe must keep moving or mankind will perish. Controversially, Harvey Weinstein wants to cut the film for its cinema release in the US.
The Iranian-British screenwriter Hossein Amini’s keenly awaited directorial debut, The Two Faces of January, will receive a special gala. Based on a 1964 Patricia Highsmith novel and shot in Turkey, the film stars Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst and the breakthrough star of the Coen brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis, Oscar Isaac, in a tale of murder, jealousy, deceit and paranoia.
Awards
Tribute will be paid to the veteran firebrand Ken Loach with screenings of some of the major works he has directed and an honorary Golden Bear.
• The Berlin Film Festival runs from tomorrow until February 16. Visit www.berlinale.de
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