Berlin Film Festival unveiled titles selected for Berlinale Special, Berlinale Series, Forum and Forum Expanded; along wit the official poster of the upcoming 73rd edition of the festival. “The key visual for the 73rd Berlinale directs our attention to the indispensable core of a metropolitan film festival: the audience. We’re very pleased that with this year’s poster, we can honor those whose curiosity, enthusiasm and applause makes the Berlinale a vibrant, inspiring and joyful event,” comments Mariëtte Rissenbeek, Executive Director of the Berlinale.
Berlinale Series will once again offer an exclusive first look at new series productions from around the world, Forum program revealed the first eight films, and to date, six films have been invited to the 2023 Berlinale Special.
Berlinale Special films
Infinity Pool
by Brandon Cronenberg | with Alexander Skarsgård, Mia Goth, Cleopatra Coleman
Canada 2022
Berlinale Special | European premiere
Loriots große Trickfilmrevue (Loriot’s Great Cartoon Revue)
by Loriot, Peter Geyer | with Loriot
Germany 2023
Berlinale Special | World premiere | Animation
Manhole
by Kazuyoshi Kumakiri | with Yuto Nakajima, Nao, Kento Nagayama
Japan 2023
Berlinale Special | International premiere
Seneca (Seneca – On the Creation of Earthquakes)
by Robert Schwentke | with John Malkovich, Louis Hofmann, Geraldine Chaplin, Lilith Stangenberg, Samuel Finzi
Germany / Morocco 2022
Berlinale Special Gala | World premiere
TÁR
by Todd Field | with Cate Blanchett, Nina Hoss, Noémie Merlant, Sophie Kauer
USA 2022
Berlinale Special Gala | German premiere
Untitled Boris Becker Documentary
by Alex Gibney
United Kingdom / USA 2023
Berlinale Special Gala | World premiere | Documentary Form
Berlinale Series
Der Schwarm (The Swarm)
by Barbara Eder, Luke Watson, Philipp Stölzl (Director) | with Cécile de France, Alexander Karim, Leonie Benesch, Joshua Odjick Germany / Belgium 2023
Berlinale Series (Out of competition) | World premiere | Broadcaster: ZDF, France Télévisions, Rai, Viaplay Group, Hulu Japan, ORF, SRF | 3/8 episodes
Whales sink boats, shellfish poison a coastal town. In this adaptation of Schätzing’s novel, nature seems to be taking its revenge. A research team becomes the last hope – not only fighting this threat, but also corrupt corporations and politicians.
First Films of Berlinale Forum
Concrete Valley
by Antoine Bourges | with Hussam Douhna, Amani Ibrahim, Abdullah Nadaf, Lynn Nanume
Canada 2022
Forum | International premiere
A Syrian family has lived in Canada for five years. As Farah tries to settle in with her community in Toronto, Rashid – an unlicensed doctor – struggles with the ruptures in his biography. A film about the everyday difficulties in a new country.
Dearest Fiona
by Fiona Tan
Netherlands 2023
Forum | World premiere
As a voice reads letters from a father to his daughter off camera, 20th century archival images from the Netherlands are shown. Fiona Tan touchingly explores what potential emerges when sound and image diverge.
Horse Opera
by Moyra Davey
USA 2022
Forum | European premiere
Narrations of parties and nightly lectures meet images of urinating horses and still lives in a country house. The soundtrack – from Lauryn Hill to Prince – is overshadowed only by Moyra Davey’s laconical voice.
El juicio (The Trial)
by Ulises de la Orden
Argentina / Italy / France / Norway 2023
Forum | World premiere | Documentary Form
1985 – two years after the end of the military dictatorship in Argentina, leading members of the junta are tried in court. Ulises de la Orden creates 18 succinctly edited chapters from 530 hours of footage, bearing witness to state terror.
Llamadas desde Moscú (Calls from Moscow)
by Luís Alejandro Yero
Cuba / Germany / Norway 2023
Forum | World premiere | Debut film | Documentary Form
A prefabricated estate in Moscow is meant as a transit stop for four young people from Cuba – until Russia’s attack on Ukraine radically shifts their outlook. Moving telephone calls back home provide the structure of Luís Alejandro Yero’s debut work.
Mammalia
by Sebastian Mihăilescu | with István Téglás, Mălina Manovici, Denisa Nicolae, Steliana Bălăcianu, Rolando Matsangos
Romania / Poland / Germany 2023
Forum | World premiere
When he spies on his partner, Camil discovers something sinister: a cult with white robes and strange rituals. Sebastian Mihăilescu’s experimental narrative cinema plays with myths, gender roles, and the set pieces of the horror genre.
Poznámky z Eremocénu (Notes from Eremocene)
by Viera Čákanyová
Slovakia / Czechia 2023
Forum | World premiere
Scientist Edward O. Wilson has named the coming geological era Eremocene. In her analogue science fiction essay, Viera Čákanyová explores this era of loneliness in dialogue with a virtual alter ego from the future.
This Is the End
by Vincent Dieutre
France 2023
Forum | World premiere | Documentary Form
Road trips through Los Angeles, famous verses in the Poetry Lounge and love in times of the pandemic: Rendezvous with an old flame, fourty years later. After Jaurès (2012), Vincent Dieutre presents another tender autofictional piece in the Forum.
Forum Expanded
Comrade leader, comrade leader, how nice to see you
by Walid Raad
USA 2022
Forum Expanded Exhibition | European premiere
The installation features video projections of waterfalls, which are inspired by the story of the “Fickle Falls” in Lebanon, which were named and renamed numerous times by militias engaged in the Lebanese Civil War, depending on their shifting alliances.
Conspiracy
by Simone Leigh, Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich | with Lorraine O’Grady
USA 2022
Forum Expanded | European premiere
A tribute to the work of Black female artists, fusing filmmaking and sculpture into a poetic study of the manual labor that goes into making art.
Es gibt keine Angst (Afraid Doesn’t Exist)
by Anna Zett
Germany 2023
Forum Expanded | World premiere
Anna Zett collages mostly unreleased footage from the Berlin Archive of the GDR-Opposition into a pulsating short film thriller. The film opens up an associative realm which allows for the re-evaluation of experiences of violence hard to access today.
Last Things
by Deborah Stratman | with Valérie Massadian, Marcia Bjørnerud
France / USA / Portugal 2023
Forum Expanded | World premiere
Combining science and avant-garde, this film approaches evolution and extinction from the point of view of rocks and various future others. It introduces the geo-biosphere as a place of evolutionary possibility, where humans disappear, but life endures.
No Stranger at All
by Priya Sen
India 2022
Forum Expanded | International premiere
Through a collection of incomplete fictions, this film portrays Delhi, India, in times of lockdown and unrest. Priya Sen constructs a kaleidoscope of resilient voices that keep the language of hatred at bay and absorb the city’s grief and euphoria.
On This Shore, Here.
by Jasmina Metwaly | with Alaa Abdulatif
Germany 2022
Forum Expanded Exhibition | European premiere
A fable, using song and text to tell the story of a present frozen in Medusa’s gaze. Human and non-human protagonists appear: a historian from Alexandria, Carbon 12 and Carbon 14, as well as a Gorgone, who roams a city, detecting pasts and futures.
That Day, on the River
by Lei Lei | with Lei Jiaqi, Lei Lei, Lu Yue
People’s Republic of China 2022
Forum Expanded | World premiere
Searching for the house his father grew up in, director Lei Lei charts the story of a childhood in rural China using a mix of found footage, collage, and animation techniques: a moving account of all the things the father thinks he was not good at.
Un gif larguísimo (A Very Long Gif)
by Eduardo Williams
Spain / Norway / Greece 2022
Forum Expanded Exhibition | International premiere
In Eduardo Williams’s video, scales are flipped and imperceptible movements are unveiled. Images from a camera passing through a
digestive system and gazes into the far distance sustain each other with the tension of celestial bodies.