The 2024 Berlin Film Festival is set to run from Feb 15th to Feb 25th. Now in its seventy-fourth edition, the Berlinale is a film festival that began during the post-war period as a platform for the cinematic exploration of social issues. This fest continues to have a diverse, independent and politically minded spirit to showcase thrilling new feature films, documentaries, shorts, experimental and restored classic cinema.
The Opening Film is the drama "Small Things Like These" from director, Tim Mielants. Oscar-nominee, Cillian Murphy stars as an Irish father in the 1980's who discovers startling secrets about one of the Magdalene asylums in his town. This was a horrific place from the past which were laundries run by the Roman Catholic church who claimed their intentions were to reform "fallen" young women but in reality, these girls were just abused and used as free labor. This world premiere is one of the selections in the Main International Competition.
A total of twenty films have been selected in the international competition for the Golden Bear and includes new works from Mati Diop ("Dahomey"), Olivier Assayas ("Hors du temps (Suspended Time)"), Bruno Dumont ("L'Empire (The Empire)"), Piero Messina ("Another End"), Abderrahmane Sissako ("Black Tea"), Alonso Ruizpalacios ("La Cocina"), Claire Burger ("Langue étrangère"), Matthias Glasner ("Sterben (Dying)") and Hong Sangsoo ("Yeohaengjaui pilyo (A Traveler’s Needs)").
Oscar-winning actress, Lupita Nyong’o will preside as President of the jury for the Main Competition. The rest of the jury members who will decide which films will be awarded prizes are American actor and filmmaker, Brady Corbet; Hong Kong filmmaker, Ann Hui; German director, Christian Petzold; Spanish filmmaker, Albert Serra; Italian actress, Jasmine Trinca and Ukrainian novelist, Oksana Zabuzhko.
The Berlinale Specials highlights exciting new films not in competition and the line-up will include the world premiere of Johan Renck’s sci-fi feature, "Spaceman" which has Adam Sandler as an astronaut in space. However, this is not a comedy but a drama and features Carey Mulligan, Paul Dano and Isabella Rossellini. Following the premiere in Berlin, "Spaceman" will be released worldwide on Netflix on March 1st.
"Sasquatch Sunset", a surreal comedy by the Zellner Brothers, stars Riley Keough and Jesse Eisenberg as the heads of a family of these mythical creatures. But what makes this film particularly intriguing is that the actors are completely concealed in full body hair and do not speak.
Abel Ferrara is set to premiere his latest, a non-fiction feature, "Turn in the Wound" which documents the American filmmaker's travels to Kyiv and Ukraine to explore what remains of these countries after two years of Russia’s brutal invasion. The rock musician. Patti Smith also appears in the film. "Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger" is a feature documentary, making its debut in the Specials sidebar, about the influential British filmmakers, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, examining their significant works of cinema that includes "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp", "Black Narcissus" and "The Red Shoes". The doc is narrated by an impressive filmmaker in his own right, Martin Scorsese who has stated many times how much this team and their films have inspired his own work. And Scorsese will receive this year's honorary Golden Bear Lifetime Achievement Award and will be honored in the Classics program with a screening of a digital restoration of his 1985 feature, "After Hours".
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