Panorama Documentary
Contemporary war looms large over the 12 documentaries in this year’s Panorama. Austrian filmmaker Patric Chiha turns the lens on a group of friends who refuse to comply with the Russian regime and are forced into exile in A Russian Winter (sold by Best Friend Forever). Ukrainian women break their silence on the torture and sexual abuse they faced at the hands of Russian troops in Traces, directed by Alisa Kovalenko and Marysia Nikitiuk. Thirty years of war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the focus of Elisé Sawasawa’s Enough Is Enough. Meanwhile, the Syrian war is the backdrop of Tawfik Sabouni’s The Other Side Of The Sun (Andana Films), where five survivors return to the former torture prison of Saidnaya to re-enact their experiences.
Artists are the subjects of several of this year’s selection. US author Siri Hustvedt gets the biography treatment from German filmmaker Sabine Lidl in Dance Around The Self, as does Scottish artist Douglas Gordon in Douglas Gordon By Douglas Gordon (Autlook Filmsales), where filmmaker Finlay Pretsell is invited into the Turner Prize winner’s Berlin studio. A French photographer is losing his sight in Arnaud Alain’s The Hidden Face Of The Earth, while Chinese artist Viv Li searches for identity in Two Mountains Weighing Down My Chest as she drifts between Berlin and Beijing.
The theme of masculinity has a presence in Panorama too. In Pete Muller’s Bucks Harbor, young boys growing up in Maine in the US grapple with brutal winters, fishing jobs and the rigid codes of their fathers. Rodeos are saddled up in Jaripeo (Indox), by Efrain Mojica and Rebecca Zweig, which peeks inside the infamous sporting event in the Mexican state of Michoacan.
Cultures collide in Yulia Lokshina’s Around Paradise (Filmotor), where two Paraguayan students are searching for gold while their European neighbours seek salvation from armageddon. Rounding off the selection is Tristan Forever (Rediance), directed by Tobias Nölle and Loran Bonnardot, where a 30-year friendship between a Parisian doctor and a fisherman living on the most isolated inhabited island in the world is taken to the next level.
Generation Highlights
Opening Generation 14plus is George Jaques’ UK comedy Sunny Dancer (sold by Embankment Films), starring Bella Ramsey as a young cancer survivor who reluctantly joins a summer camp for teens with similar experiences. The cast also includes Neil Patrick Harris.
Dutch filmmaker Mees Peijnenburg, whose Paradise Drifters played the same section in 2020, returns to Berlin with sibling drama A Family (Paradise City Sales) starring Carice van Houten of Game Of Thrones.
Debut features include Mexican filmmaker Fernanda Tovar’s Sad Girlz (Alpha Violet), about two friends whose relationship is tested after an incident at a party, and Black Burns Fast from South African director Sandulela Asanda, a boarding school drama about queer Black self-discovery.
German director Sasa Vajda makes his solo feature directorial debut with The Lights, They Fall, in which a teenager drifts through summer while a nurse takes care of his dying mother. Genre titles include Don’t Come Out from Dominican filmmaker Victoria Linares Villegas, in which a woman hides her true self, unleashing a deadly force; and Matapanki from Chile’s Diego Fuentes, about a punk kid who gains superpowers from alcohol.
US documentary What Will I Become? from Lexie Bean and Logan Rozos weaves together the stories of two trans boys who died by suicide. Executive producer is Harper Steele, a former head writer on Saturday Night Live and the subject of 2024 Netflix doc Will & Harper.
The Generation Kplus opener is The Fabulous Time Machine (Split Screen) from Brazil’s Eliza Capai, who won two prizes at the Berlinale in 2019 with documentary Your Turn. Her latest follows girls who dream of a better future in Brazil’s dry backlands, where men still tower over women in status.
Japanese anime makes it into the section with Yusuke Hirota’s Chimney Town: Frozen In Time, a sequel to 2020 box-office hit Poupelle Of Chimney Town.
Also from Brazil, Allan Deberton’s Gugu’s World (m-appeal) follows an 11-year old raised by his vibrant but increasingly fragile grandmother. Gugu’s strict father is played by acclaimed actor Lazaro Ramos.
The search for a shoe over the course of a day and night becomes an epic coming-of-age journey in Atlas Of The Universe (Pluto Film) by Paul Negoescu. The Romanian filmmaker’s A Month In Thailand premiered at Venice in 2012, before he scored a local box-office hit in 2016 with Two Lottery Tickets.
India’s Rima Das returns to Generation with Not A Hero, in which a city boy adapts to life in his ancestral village. Das played in the section last year with Village Rockstars 2 and won a special mention in 2019 with Bulbul Can Sing.
Forum Highlights
Of the 32 features playing in Forum, 31 are world premieres. The outlier, Cambodian director Rithy Panh’s latest documentary We Are The Fruits Of The Forest (sold by Playtime), debuted at Tokyo last year and depicts a four-year journey through Indigenous communities in Cambodia’s northern mountains. Panh was a previous Berlinale documentary winner for 2020’s Irradiated.
Further highlights from Asia include Indonesian filmmaker Joko Anwar’s horror comedy Ghost In The Cell (Barunson E&A), as prison inmates unite against a murderous ghost. Anwar’s previous genre titles include The Forbidden Door and two Satan’s Slaves films. Indian filmmaker Madhusree Dutta combines historical research and found stories in Flying Tigers, a multi-location probe into the US army unit supplying Kunming during the Second World War. A Japanese supermarket is the setting of Yusuke Iwasaki’s debut AnyMart, a horror film reflecting on the country’s societal issues.
Europe has the biggest showing in Forum, with notable titles including Kim Ekberg’s Swedish black-and-white drama Doggerland, about a man nearing 40 but still living with his parents, who drifts through the cultural scene in the city of Norrköping. Acclaimed German documentarian Volker Koepp traces his roots back to Eastern Europe in Chronos — Flow Of Time as the war against Ukraine comes to the forefront.
In Tudor Cristian Jurgiu’s coming-of-age drama On Our Own (True Colours), a Romanian teenager grows up quickly when her parents leave to work in Italy. Elsewhere, a parole officer returns home to handle her estranged father’s death in Ralitza Petrova’s Lust (Inwave Films), a co-production between Bulgaria, Denmark and Sweden. Petrova’s 2016 feature Godless picked up accolades on the festival circuit including best film at Locarno. Belgian art project Joy Boy: A Tribute To Julius Eastman (Flanders Image) pays homage to the African American composer through a transnational collective performance by six artists.
Meanwhile Ethiopian filmmaker Haile Gerima brings Black Lions — Roman Wolves, a documentary about Italy’s brutal colonial legacy in Ethiopia.