Viens je t’emmène (Nobody’s Hero) by Alain Guiraudie will open the Panorama 2022 program of the 72nd Berlin International Film Festival. A total of 29 films from 33 countries are confirmed for this year’s program, including ew films by Isabelle Stever, Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson and Alejandra Márquez Abella. Elliot Page has joined the Italian film Nel mio nome (Into My Name) as executive producer and there is a documentary focus on Sub-Saharan Africa with three films.

Alain Guiraudie will open the section with his political satire Viens je t’emmène (Nobody’s Hero), his first film to be presented at the Berlinale. Guiraudie’s love-struck band of middle-class citizens race through the streets of Clermont-Ferrand following a terrorist attack. Love, paranoia and distrust propel his cast of characters through this satire which, in spite of all its social criticism, is full of empathy for its flawed heroines and heroes.

Panorama 2022

The films of the program can be found below.

Aşk, Mark ve Ölüm (Love, Deutschmarks and Death)
Germany
by Cem Kaya
World premiere / Panorama Dokumente

Cem Kaya’s dense documentary essay celebrates 60 years of Turkish music in Germany. An alternative post-war history that is at the same time a musical Who’s Who – from Yüksel Özkasap to Derdiyoklar and Muhabbet.

Baqyt (Happiness)
Kazakhstan
by Askar Uzabayev
with Laura Myrzakhmetova, Yerbolat Alkozha
World premiere

For her job as an influencer, she wears orange and a broad smile. The “Happiness” brand is her doctrine, but her home is a dark place where brute force has ruled for years. This film shows us what it costs to escape the trap of misogyny.

Berdreymi (Beautiful Beings)
Iceland / Denmark / Sweden / Netherlands / Czech Republic
by Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson
with Birgir Dagur Bjarkason, Áskell Einar Pálmason, Viktor Benóný Benediktsson, Snorri Rafn Frímannsson
World premiere

Balli, 14, is an outsider. But then he meets three boys of his own age. A coming-of-age drama which finds poetic images for a tentative, emergent friendship that threatens to falter due to gender-normed codes of conduct, and violence.

Bettina
Germany
by Lutz Pehnert
World premiere / Panorama Dokumente

A biography set in East and West Berlin in which singer-songwriter Bettina Wegner, born in 1947, sings about life in the GDR, her feelings of being uprooted in West Berlin, and looks back with humor and honesty on a life of resistance.

Cinco lobitos (Lullaby)
Spain
by Alauda Ruiz de Azúa
with Laia Costa, Susi Sánchez, Ramón Barea, Mikel Bustamante
World premiere / debut film

Amaia and Javi are new parents. When he disappears for weeks on end to work, she seeks support from her parents. But Amaia’s mother suddenly falls ill. A sensitive study of the caring, cross-generational role of women.

Concerned Citizen
Israel
by Idan Haguel
with Ariel Wolf, Shlomi Bertonov
World premiere

Ben and Raz are painstakingly pursuing their desire to have a child, and the migrant neighbourhood where this gay couple has set up their new flat is on the up. But a conflict over a newly planted tree in the city brings deep-seated prejudices to light.

Una femmina (Una Femmina – The Code of Silence)
Italy
by Francesco Costabile
with Lina Siciliano, Fabrizio Ferracane, Anna Maria De Luca, Simona Malato, Luca Massaro
World premiere

Hardship and beauty lie cheek by jowl in Rosa’s home in the wilds of Calabria. When she becomes aware of her family’s involvement in the mafia, she has to decide how far she is willing to go in order to break out of the ’Ndrangheta.

Fogaréu
Brazil / France
by Flávia Neves
with Bárbara Colen, Eucir de Souza, Nena Inoue, Fernanda Vianna, Vilminha Chaves, Timothy Wilson, Typyire Ãwa
World premiere / debut film

After years of absence, Fernanda returns to her uncle’s ranch in Goiás in mid-western Brazil. Her appearance and her uncomfortable questions expose ableist and colonial structures and shake the façade of her bourgeois family.

Grand Jeté
Germany
by Isabelle Stever
with Sarah Nevada Grether, Emil von Schönfels, Susanne Bredehöft
World premiere

Dance teacher and mother Nadja left her son Mario with her own mother when he was little. Now she has reappeared on his doorstep, seeking a closeness that knows fewer and fewer boundaries. An uncompromising film about family relationships.

Heroji radničke klase (Working Class Heroes)
Serbia
by Miloš Pušić
with Jasna Djuričić, Boris Isaković, Predrag Momčilović, Stefan Beronja, Aleksandar Djurica, Bojana Milanović
World premiere

Lidija is working for a dubious real estate company. It is her job to protect the construction site’s image and cover up the dirty tracks left by Serbian turbo-capitalism. But when the workers rebel, her complicity is put to the test.

Kdyby radši hořelo (Somewhere Over the Chemtrails)
Czech Republic
by Adam Koloman Rybanský
with Miroslav Krobot, Michal Isteník, Anna Polívková
World premiere / debut film

When a villager is injured by a car at a party, firefighter Brona is immediately convinced that it is an attack perpetrated by an “Arab”. His colleague Standa sees things differently. A laconic film that explores the causes of racism.

No Simple Way Home
Kenya / South Sudan / South Africa
by Akuol de Mabior
World premiere / debut film / Panorama Dokumente

Akuol de Mabior is the daughter of a martyr of the revolution in South Sudan. As her mother is sworn in as vice president, the young woman tries to find out if this country torn by civil war can ever become her home.

No U-Turn
Nigeria / South Africa / France / Germany
by Ike Nnaebue
World premiere / Panorama Dokumente

As a young man, Ike Nnaebue tried to flee to Europe. Twenty years later, he retraces the steps of his journey back then to find out what motivates young people today to expose themselves to the dangers of a passage into an uncertain future.

El norte sobre el vacío (Northern Skies Over Empty Space)
Mexico
by Alejandra Márquez Abella
with Gerardo Trejoluna, Paloma Petra, Dolores Heredia, Juan Daniel García Treviño, Mayra Hermosillo
World premiere

With a keen sense of how to deploy omens that herald change, Alejandra Márquez Abella portrays a period of epochal change in rural Mexico – as seen by those who are usually restricted to the role of passive supporting actor.

Produkty 24 (Convenience Store)
Russian Federation / Slovenia / Turkey
by Michael Borodin
with Zukhara Sanzysbay, Lyudmila Vasilyeva, Tolibzhon Suleimanov, Nargiz Abdullaeva
World premiere / debut film

A supermarket in a Moscow suburb is the heart of darkness for the Uzbek “employees” who work there around the clock and are threatened, abused and imprisoned. Mukhabbat escapes and reveals the vicious circle of modern slavery. A truly surreal real-life trip.

Viens je t’emmène (Nobody’s Hero)
France
by Alain Guiraudie
with Jean-Charles Clichet, Noémie Lvovsky, Iliès Kadri, Renaud Rutten, Doria Tillier
World premiere

After a terrorist attack in Clermont-Ferrand, France, events are driven forward by an unusual cast of characters centering round a likable man in his mid-thirties, an older married female sex worker and a young homeless man of Arab descent.