Controversy began at a press conference where Wim Wenders, the president of the main jury, was asked how the German government’s official support for Israel impacted the festival’s stance on Gaza. His blunt answer — that filmmakers needed to stay out of politics — became an instant soundbite that unleashed a firestorm of criticism on social media. Other side effects followed: Booker-winning author Arundhati Roy canceled her planned visit to the Berlinale to support a restored film, and more than 80 eminent artists and filmmakers including Tilda Swinton, Mark Ruffalo and Javier Bardem signed an open letter to the festival organizers urging them to take a clear stance on the war in Gaza. The debate lasted throughout the festival and cast a chill over an otherwise well-oiled Berlinale, stealing the headlines from the generally well-liked and well-selected film program.

Though the message that got through was quickly reduced to “films are the opposite of politics”, here is what Wim Wenders actually said about Gaza:

“We have to stay out of politics, because if we make movies that are dedicatedly political, we enter the field of politics. But we are the opposite of politics. We have to do the work of people, not the work of politicians.”

And for some counterbalance, it must be said that there have been some very strong politically and socially engaged films in the wider Berlinale program. For the opening film, festival director Tricia Tuttle chose No Good Men by Afghan director Shahrbanoo Sadat, a surprising depiction of Afghan life for women before and during the American pullout in 2021, underpinned by a riotous feminist romance. In Roya, Iranian director Mahnaz Mohammadi dramatizes her harrowing experience in prison.

Perhaps the biggest push-back to Wenders’ remarks – and, in a broader context, to how the German government has been handling political topics in the last couple of years – came from the festival attendees themselves, as the Audience Award went to the German courtroom thriller Prosecution, a very blunt indictment of the self-proclaimed objectivity of the national judicial system, particularly in the case of hate crimes and right-wing extremism. Traces offered the documentary testimony of Ukrainian women and men sexually assaulted by invading Russian soldiers. The fact that both Traces and Prosecution won Panorama Audience prizes might suggest that the festival public are more politically inclined than the festival organizers — or perhaps freer to express their views.

Ironically, or by design, Wenders’ jury chose to bestow its highest honors on two highly political movies. In Yellow Letters, the best film winner, director Ilker Catak directly addresses the fear-instilling injustice of the Turkish state in interfering with the lives of a theater director/playwright and his actress-wife, who summarily lose their jobs over a socially critical play and a slight to the authorities. Emin Alper’s Salvation symbolically traces the origins of political violence and war back to two neighboring Kurdish clans simmering with savage impulses and egged on by a self-styled Messiah figure. And in a slightly broader political context, there are the queer underpinnings of Sandra Huller’s award-winning performance in Markus Schleinzer’s much-admired film Rose, a startling historical tale about a soldier tired of war who settles in a village and marries, without anyone suspecting (except the audience) that he’s a woman. Interestingly, all three of these films are supposed to be inspired by real events.

In the trends-to-watch category, lots of black-and-white cinematography gave many films a special sheen, including Rose, Grant Gee’s Everybody Digs Bill Evans (winner of the best director award), and Fernando Eimbcke’s charming tale of love, loss and loneliness Flies, all visual standouts.

In general, children and the elderly were much on view, the former in films like Beth de Araujo’s Josephine featuring the fantastic child actress Mason Reeves as the eyewitness to a rape, and the Mexican Bastian Escobar as a boy alone in the city while his mom is in the hospital in Flies. Winner of best screenplay was writer-director Geneviève Dulude-de Celles for her fetching, offbeat tale Nina Roza, about an eight-year-old girl painter from rural Bulgaria who is hailed as a prodigy, and her ambivalence at the prospect of fame.

Taking home two prizes – the Jury Prize and the award for best supporting performance – was Lance Hammer’s Queen at Sea, an upsetting but never cruel story about an elderly couple played by Anna Calder-Marshall and Tom Courtenay, as the wife descends into cognitive decline. And the documentary Yo (Love Is a Rebellious Bird) by Anna Fitch and Banker White turns a woman in her eighties into a fascinating character who it is a delight to get to know. The film’s highly original set design, involving intricate miniatures of Yo’s house, won it the outstanding artistic contribution award.

Berlinale Shorts was, as ever, a rich collection of brief works up to 30 minutes, their makers ranging from emerging talents to seasoned directors like Radu Jude (who once again looked into the complicated recent past of Romania with Shot Reverse Shot) and Yolande Zauberman (who dedicated the screening of her film Les juifs riches to the memory of Frederick Wiseman, a master of the documentary form). As is often the case in this section, animation was particularly strong, the highlight being Unidentified Nonflying Objects (UNO), the latest by Russian director Sasha Svirsky. As he explained during the post-screening Q&A, that film also comes with a certain political baggage, as it was the first short he made after relocating to Germany four years ago due to his objection to the war in Ukraine. Also greatly appreciated was Cosmonauts, which was designated as the Berlin Short Film Candidate for the European Film Awards.

The main prize in the section went to Someday a Child, whose director Marie-Rose Osta already caught festival goers’ attention in Rotterdam a few weeks ago as one of the authors of the omnibus film Home Bitter Home. This time, in addition to delivering a powerful film where a young boy uses superpowers to repel invading aircraft, she used her platform to openly address the precarious situation in her native Lebanon as well as Palestine, once again showing that whatever informal gag order had been in place during the official press conferences was powerless against the voices of filmmakers who come to festivals to be heard and share their vision, with the latter sometimes rooted in a painful reality that needs to be acknowledged.

Members of the Jury: Wim Wenders (Jury President), Min Bahadur Bham, Bae Doona, Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, Reinaldo Marcus Green, HIKARI, Ewa Puszczyska

GOLDEN BEAR FOR BEST FILM
‘Gelbe Briefe’ (‘Yellow Letters’)
by Ilker Çatak
produced by Ingo Fliess

SILVER BEAR GRAND JURY PRIZE
‘Kurtulus’ (‘Salvation’)
by Emin Alper

SILVER BEAR JURY PRIZE
‘Queen at Sea’
by Lance Hammer

SILVER BEAR FOR BEST DIRECTOR
Grant Gee
for ‘Everybody Digs Bill Evans’

SILVER BEAR FOR BEST LEADING PERFORMANCE
Sandra Hüller
in ‘Rose’ by Markus Schleinzer

SILVER BEAR FOR BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE
Anna Calder-Marshall & Tom Courtenay
in ‘Queen at Sea’ by Lance Hammer

SILVER BEAR FOR BEST SCREENPLAY
Geneviève Dulude-de Celles
for ‘Nina Roza’ by Geneviève Dulude-de Celles

SILVER BEAR FOR OUTSTANDING ARTISTIC CONTRIBUTION
Anna Fitch, Banker White
for’ ‘Yo’ (Love is a Rebellious Bird) by Anna Fitch, Banker White

PRIZES OF THE PERSPECTIVES JURY
Members of the Jury: Sofia Alaoui, Frédéric Hambalek, Dorota Lech

BEST FIRST FEATURE AWARD 
Chronicles from the Siege
by Abdallah Alkhatib produced by Taqiyeddine Issaad, Salah Issaad

BERLINALE DOCUMENTARY AWARD
Members of the Jury: Lemohang Mosese, B Ruby Rich, Shaunak Sen

BERLINALE DOCUMENTARY AWARD
If Pigeons Turned to Gold
by Pepa Lubojacki produced by Klára Mamojková, Wanda Kaprálová

PRIZES OF THE INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM JURY
Members of the Jury: Ameer Fakher Eldin, Stefan Grissemann, Gabriele Stötzer

GOLDEN BEAR FOR BEST SHORT FILM
Yawman ma walad (Someday a Child)
by Marie-Rose Osta

SILVER BEAR JURY PRIZE (SHORT FILM)
A Woman’s Place Is Everywhere
by Fanny Texier

BERLINALE SHORTS CUPRA FILMMAKER AWARD
Di san xian (Kleptomania)
by Jingkai Qu

PRIZES OF GENERATION KPLUS
Children‘s Jury Generation Kplus
Members of the Jury: Walter Moritz Arndt, Gustav Arnz, Thabani Dabulamanzi, Rosa Sophie Krasznahorkai, Vera Marsh, Emir Efe Özeren, Alma Sofia Villanueva Bullemer

CRYSTAL BEAR FOR THE BEST FILM Feito Pipa (Gugu’s World)
by Allan Deberton

CRYSTAL BEAR FOR THE BEST SHORT FILM
Whale 52 – Suite for Man, Boy, and Whale (Wal 52 – Suite für Mann, Junge und Wal)
by Daniel Neiden

THE GRAND PRIX OF THE INTERNATIONAL JURY FOR THE BEST FILM
Feito Pipa (Gugu’s World) by Allan Deberton

THE SPECIAL PRIZE OF THE INTERNATIONAL JURY FOR THE BEST SHORT FILM
Spî (White | Weiß)
by Navroz Shaban

Bowing at the Forum section at the Berlinale, Cesarean Weekend is neither a clichéd study of masculinity in crisis nor a reactionary clarion call aimed at the manosphere. By exploring the two men-children’s and their fathers’ troubled relationship with themselves and each other, the film offers a delirious and deliciously disorienting stab at characters confined by past and present social norms they have problems conforming to. Shunning realism at every turn, Shirvani flings comedy, tragedy, history and geography into the blender and delivers a mind-bending and heart-rending piece about existence in contemporary Iran.

“Fuck your existence!” reads graffiti sprayed on a wall, and this might well be Shirvani’s own motto towards mainstream Iranian society. He made his international breakthrough in 2013 with Fat Shaker, an absurdist drama about an oversized con-man getting his comeuppance and attaining redemption for using his handsome-yet-deaf son as bait to snare women. Today the Iranian indie producer-director is part of a coterie of filmmakers (including Vahid Vakilifar and Mani Haghighi, among others) trying to veer away from the aesthetics of their festival-acclaimed forefathers.

Refusing to play by the rules of establishments of any political stripe – whether that of the state or the dissident movement – Shirvani elected to follow up the success of Fat Shaker by retreating into underground cinema with his workshops and projects with his Alternative Film Lab. Having spent the past decade producing raw films from young cineastes, the maverick filmmaker has now returned with something that subverts expectations about narrative, characters and space.

Starting with the blast of a rooftop party, the film slowly descends into surreal debates about society and philosophy in a pool downstairs, before ending up in dream-like, death-infested finale in the sea.

Cesarean Weekend begins with a 15-minute sequence of hedonistic revelry, as a group of young people smoke, dance, get tattooed and row to the sound of booming dance music. Weaving his way through the many women literally letting their hair down is Milad (Milad Ahmadzadeh), a curly-haired wannabe-Lothario seen flirting with each and every woman around him – an extreme reaction, it seems, to his learning of the pregnancy of his frustrated girlfriend (Bita Jamshidi). His buddy Armin (Armin Shirvani, the director’s real-life son) is a bespectacled nerd who has to be literally dragged out of bed to join the party.

Just when one is tempted to see Milad and Armin as Iranian incels, Shirvani throws a curve ball by splicing snippets of the pair’s intimate interactions at another time and space. Roaming the ruins of an abandoned tenement block and the overgrown gardens around it at dawn – before or after the party, we are not sure – the two seemingly stoned men, dressed only in their swimming trunks, crack infantile jokes (including the one about the graffiti), hug trees, chase goats and reminisce dreamily about their good times together. Teasing both tenderness and rawness from his two leads, Shirvani leaves the nature of their relationship very much ambivalent, a guessing game best left for the engaged viewer.

Without warning, the film shifts shape as the young people relocate to a swimming pool on the ground level of the house. They are now joined by patriarchs: relaxing in the water surrounded by youth, Milad’s bearded bear of a father (Peyman Yeganeh) taunts his feral son for his lack of focus in life. “Using the language of misery is the only thing philosophy taught you” is one of the many insults he hurls at the manchild Milad  – while Armin’s more refined dad (played by the Vienna-educated musical conductor Nader Mashayeki), an expatriate composer who has lived abroad and away from his own family for years, laments the collapse of culture in his homeland.

Through the explosive exchanges among this quartet, filmed by Shirvani in close-ups and edited together with dynamism and danger, the tensions between generations are revealed. By venting fury at their overbearing or absent fathers, Milad and Armin are (probably) voicing the pent-up frustration of youth about the ignorance and ineptness of all these self-styled adults. While hardly addressing directly the turmoil gripping Iranian society, Shirvani’s barbed commentary about its social mores is more than evident.

These heated arguments eventually give way to a visually infernal denouement: as the focus shifts away from the young to the elders, Shirvani lets loose the two fathers in the sea. The pristine, high-resolution imagery of the rooftop party fades into the distance; heightened by Oveis Derakshan’s eerie sound design, the film morphs into a series of flame-tinted, fogged-up sequences of the two middle-aged men floating off the shores of the Caspian Sea, imploding with the guilt of not having done enough for themselves and the world and their inability to attain their life-long ambitions in their homeland. Discarding his demure demeanour of the earlier scenes, Armin’s father lets out screams beset by shame and regret for not being able to direct Gustav Mahler’s Ninth symphony in Iran.

This wish of his shouldn’t be taken as a straightforward critique of censorship of art in Iran: Mahler’s work has indeed been performed in the country, and Mashayeki himself brought even more experimental work there (John Cage’s music, for example) during his real-life tenure at the Tehran Symphony Orchestra. Rather, this final line should be taken as Shirvani’s opaque commentary about an individual’s inability to overcome his inner demons which are, indeed, shaped by the social constraints around them. That, however, might be too serious an interpretation for Shirvani’s liking. Like his previous work – not just the features, but also shorts and even mischievously surreal installations – Cesarean Weekend should be enjoyed like a strange dream as much as a piece of social commentary.

Director, producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor: Mohammad Shirvani
Cast: Nader Mashayekhi, Peyman Yeganeh, Milad Ahmadzadeh, Armin Shirvani, Bita Jamshidi
Music composer: Reza Rostamian
Sound designer: Oveis Derakhshan
Production company: Alternative Film Lab
Venue: Berlin Film Festival (Forum)
In Persian
90 minutes

Trial of Hein borrows the clothes of naturalistic playwrights like Ibsen or Strindberg, but adds an allegorical fairy-tale undertow, plus some heavily mannered theatrical elements. If the plot feels familiar, that may be because the homecoming stranger with a mysteriously murky identity is a recurring archetype in both fiction and non-fiction films, from The Return of Martin Guerre (1982) to Sommersby (1993), The Astronaut’s Wife (1999), The Imposter (2012) and beyond. World premiered to positive reviews in Berlin this week, Stänicke’s solemn drama has solid art-house credentials that should ensure further festival interest.

A painterly opening sequence zooms in on a gaunt, intense, thirtysomething man (Paul Boche) crossing a foggy sea to the remote island village he once called home. But there is no warm welcome awaiting him in the bosom of this tight-knit fishing community. The stranger claims to be Hein, a native son of the island, but 14 years later nobody seems able to confirm his identity. His sister, a mere child when he left, is wary. His ailing mother has dementia, and struggles to recognise her own son. Even his closest confidantes from adolescence, Greta (Emilia Schüle,) and Freidemann (Philip Froissant), are torn, the intense bond they once shared now adrift on a foggy ocean of unreliable memory.

Wary of outsiders, the island’s Amish-like elders treat Hein as an invader from the outside world, seeking to corrupt their simple way of life with his shady motives and big city ways. Their solution is to stage a public “trial” that puts this interloper to the test, measuring his claims of belonging against the values of the wider community. Over several days, clashing memories and competing versions of history are aired, which only serve to amplify hidden tensions and buried secrets.

Spanning two ponderous hours, Trial of Hein takes a long time to deliver its Big Surprise Twist, which is not actually that big, nor really much of a surprise. No spoilers here, but Stänicke does have eloquent points to make about his protagonist’s real identity, about conformity and complicity, repression and denial, and how our public persona can be a performative facade. All valid  dramatic themes, but they add up to an oddly anti-climatic pay-off. The limitations of a first-time film-maker, single-minded and heavy-handed, are probably factors here.

In aesthetic terms, Trial of Hein is a polished and pleasing affair. The film’s maritime landscapes have a rugged, elemental beauty, well complemented by Florian Mag’s precisely choreographed overhead drone shots and Damian Scholl’s elegantly chilly chamber-orchestra score. Making resourceful use of a minimal budget, the production design balances broadly realistic, period-correct elements with stylised, quasi-Brechtian artifice. Most strikingly the village set is a huddle of deconstructed wooden houses without walls or roofs, reminiscent of the town in Lars Von Trier’s Dogville (2003). In his Berlinale press materials, Stänicke admits this design decision was initially dictated by financial limitations, but it also underscores the theme of small town life being a kind of theatrical performance. This world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players.

Director, screenwtriter: Kai Stänicke
Cast: Paul Boche, Philip Froissant, Emilia Schüle, Stephanie Amarell, Jeanette Hain, Irene Kleinschmidt, Julika Jenkins
Cinematography: Florian Mag
Editing: Susanne Ocklitz
Music: Damian Scholl
Production design: Seth Turner
Producers: Andrea Schütte, Dirk Decker, Dario Suter
Production companies: Tamtam Film (Germany)
World sales: Heretic, Athens
Venue: Berlin Film Festival (Panorama)
In German
122 minutes

The film comes on the heels of the 2022 Venice sleeper Vera, which starts as a documentary about the depressed daughter of Italian spaghetti western star Giuliano Gemma, only to slide into a presumably fictional story of celebrity exploitation. In the new film, the directing duo Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel investigate the wonderfully authentic blues singer and guitarist Al Cook, who has single-mindedly devoted his entire life to American blues music. His comfy home is a sprawling shrine full of out-of-tune pianos, fancy guitars, scratchy LPs and loudspeakers, along with newspaper clippings and framed photos of Black musicians like Robert Johnson and Ma Rainey who pioneered the blues.

His collection of original Elvis Presley memorabilia is also vast and carefully preserved in suitcases. But the King’s influence extends to Al’s gray side-swept pompadour and leather jacket worn with the collar turned up. The extreme care with which he dresses is an endearing joke throughout the film.

He has taught himself English by repeating song lyrics over and over.

He has never set foot in America.

Now calamity is literally at his door. His beloved apartment (“my life”) has been bought by a crass real estate developer and is on the verge of being demolished. Al is the only tenant in the building who has refused to vacate. The first hint that the baddies mean business is when they cut off his power on Christmas Eve. Instead of reacting with anguished panic, Covi and Frimmel have him play the scene with understated control as he checks the fuses and calls the city power hotline, only to be told they will send a repairman after the holidays.

He treats the chubby, fully-tattooed owner of the building with the same irritated but laid-back politeness. One day he walks in to find the man stripped to the waist and snoring on his sofa, where he has polished off Al’s champagne. Without waking him, Al picks up a pen and signs the eviction notice, accepting the inevitable while changing his life forever.

At this point the film noticeably shifts register: far from being defeated, Al is looking forward into a brave new future, which he imagines will take him to Memphis and the Mississippi delta. There he plans to reinvent himself and get a foothold in the music industry – though his memories are forty years out of date. As he slowly sells off his souvenirs and the clutter of a lifetime, even the videos of his gigs as a young man, the mood is not sad or downbeat. At times Al confesses to an old girlfriend (now elderly and alone like himself) that he doesn’t know how to carry on. But then he remembers his youthful wish — to “get away from narrow-minded Austria”. And it spurs him on.

Watching the film, it is impossible to decide if and when the story wanders away from the “real” Al Cook. That he is a real blues musician is documented in his album covers and the fact that most of the songs in the film are written, arranged, played and sung by Al. But is the drama of the demolition of his once genteel building an incontrovertible fact? What about this relationship to his old flame? The filmmakers tease the viewer with doubts about where to draw the documentary line, as they did in Vera. For most general audiences it will make little difference, as the pleasure is in following the very consistent character face change and upheaval. And in listening to some very good blues.

Directors, producers: Tizza Covi, Rainer Frimmel
Screenplay: Tizza Covi
Cast: Alois Koch, Brigitte Meduna, Alfred Blechinger, Flurina Schneider
Cinematography: Rainer Frimmel
Production design: Lotte Lyon, Christian Gschier
Editing: Tizza Covi, Emily Artmann
Music: Al Cook
Sound design: Nora Czamler
Production company: Vento Film (Austria)
World sales: Be For Films (France)
Venue: Berlin Film Festival (Competition)
In German, English
86 minutes

A sometime actor, activist and documentary director, Mohammadi is currently banned from making films. Which makes her second dramatic feature, shot without official permission, inside and outside Iran, not just a technically impressive work but also a courageous one. Particularly brave right now, with the Iranian people still reeling from a brutal government crackdown on mass street protests over the past two months. Islamic Republic officials have admitted to killing around 3,000 of their own citizens, but other credible sources put the death toll closer to 30,000. The pattern is depressingly familiar: every few years the regime crushes any serious public dissent using armed militias, torture, censorship, detention, forced confession, farcical show trials and mass executions.

World premiering at the Berlin film festival this week, Roya could hardly be more timely, especially with escalating threats of a US military attack on Iran. That said, it works just as well as a compelling art-house suspense thriller about the horrors of totalitarianism than as direct commentary on current geopolitical events. The non-linear plot becomes fuzzy and cryptic in places, but this is a deliberate design choice which repays patient viewing. Alongside Jafar Panahi’s thematically similar It Was Just an Accident (2025), Mohammadi’s quietly furious prison saga adds to the ongoing chorus of insider voices taking laudable personal risks by criticising one of the world’s most murderous, misogynistic, authoritarian regimes.

Roya opens with an attention-grabbing sequence set in the bowels of a grubby jail. Bordering on torture-porn, this suffocating, sense-jarring scene-setter is shot from the viewpoint of the unseen protagonist, a female prisoner known only by her grimly ironic label “guest 2648”, as she is roughly manhandled from her tiny cell, dragged to an interrogation room, then pressured to sign a confession to vaguely defined crimes. When she hesitates, she is assailed with insults and death threats, then beaten by members of Unit 400, a shadowy branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps infamous for thuggery and dirty tricks (both groups have been proscribed as terrorist organisations outside Iran). Meanwhile, one of her interrogators briefly drops his bullying tone to take a family phone call confirming plans for his child’s birthday party. The banality of evil in full effect.

Switching to more conventional third-person viewpoint around the 20-minute mark, Roya finally reveals the haunted, anguished face of its eponymous heroine (angular Turkish beauty Melisa Sözen) for the first time. In an unexpected twist, it appears she is leaving jail on temporary compassionate grounds, to attend her sister’s funeral, whose mysterious death is never fully explained. The ceremony is a quietly beautiful family affair filmed in frosty, sunny woodland. But even in these painfully private moments, Roya remains under near-constant surveillance from sinister regime informers, and must wear an electronic ankle tag to confirm her location at all times.

Meanwhile, Mohammadi feeds viewers fragmentary clues about the charges against Roya, a teacher arrested for encouraging female students to defy the regime’s oppressive dress codes. She also ran a photo studio taking evidence of women scarred, burned and blinded, presumably by state militia, which is raided by police in a slow-motion flashback sequence. Adding a bitter edge to Roya’s guilty burden, relatives of her students echo the demands of her jailers by demanding she makes a full confession, sacrificing herself to save others. “You provoked them to burn their headscarves,” one claims. “Your only choice is to confess.”

However, this temporary return to freedom is not quite what it seems. Mohammadi gradually unravels these naturalistic scenes into a more impressionistic non-linear collage of dreams, memories and hallucinations. Roya’s visits to her dying father (Hamidreza Djavdan) feel like hazy half-remembered flashbacks, with a vague euthanasia subplot that remains hazy, while her journeys through the semi-deserted city have a nightmarish otherness, with sinister stalkers on every street corner, and dead bodies slumped on subway station platforms.

As Roya repeatedly returns to an eerie basement apartment full of flickering lights and ominous noises, there are strong hints here that she never left her prison cell at all, and these events are taking place inside her head. While some viewers may be left confused here, the effect is fully intentional, as Mohammadi explains in her Berlin film festival press notes. “Trauma, memory don’t move in a straight line,” she says. “They surface, fade, overlap, and interrupt one another.”

Roya is made with poise, elegance and craft. Sözen gives a hypnotic, almost wordless performance, her emotions mostly conveyed in gaunt, piercing expressions. Ashkan Ashkani’s cinematography is loaded with moments of lyrical beauty: armies of ants carrying a dead scorpion, water droplets dancing on glass, shadows and silhouettes, solar halos and lens flare. The soft amber glow of winter sunlight is a recurring motif. Music and sound design are also crucial, a steady churn of clanking, droning, mechanical noises amplifying the paranoid mood. Mohammadi ends Roya’s story with a small act of defiance, a flicker of hope in the darkness. She also saves a killer pay-off for the end credits: “written in Cell Block 2A of Evin Prison”.

Director, screenwriter: Mahnaz Mohammadi
Cast: Melisa Sözen, Maryam Palizban, Hamidreza Djavdan, Mohammad Ali Hosseinalipour, Bacho Meburishvili, Gholamhassan Taseiri
Cinematography: Ashkan Ashkani
Editing: Esmaeel Monsef
Music: Andrius Arutiunian
Sound design: Ensieh Leyla Maleki
Production design: Alborz Malekpour
Producers: Farzad Pak, Kaveh Farnam, Bady Minck, Alexander Dumreicher-Ivanceanu
Production companies: Pak Film (Germany), Media Nest (Czech)
World sales: Totem Films, Paris
Venue: Berlin Film Festival (Panorama)
In Farsi
92 minutes

Binoche plays Amanda, who is on sabbatical from her work in academia in Newcastle and currently lives in London with her teenage daughter Sara (Florence Hunt), while her estranged husband is teaching in Canada. It soon becomes clear Amanda’s decision to move to the English capital comes with a certain emotional baggage: her mother Leslie (Anna Calder-Marshall) suffers from advanced dementia, and there have been discussions about putting her in an assisted living facility.

The main obstacle to this, although Amanda can overrule him since she has power of attorney, is Leslie’s second husband Martin (Tom Courtenay), who refuses to accept his spouse requires specialized care. In fact, when we first meet them, as Amanda is checking in on their wellbeing, she catches them in flagrante delicto and calls the police. As it turns out, Martin has been told he’s no longer supposed to engage in sexual activity since Leslie’s condition makes it virtually impossible to establish consent, but he thinks he knows better, having read articles online.

From there on, the film follows two plot strands: one deals with Amanda and Martin coming to terms with what would be best for Leslie, while acknowledging the other’s point of view and their emotionally driven reasons for favoring one approach over another; the other storyline concerns Sara, who’s not quite sure what she wants to do with her life (in part due to her mixed feelings about the relocation and her parents’ separation), and has to think about whether she wants to act on the attraction she feels vis-à-vis a friend who’s similarly into her.

One body is still figuring out its autonomy, the other has all but lost it. Agonizingly tight close-ups show the anguish and frustration of each family member, including Leslie whose fragmented state of mind is tactfully conveyed by Calder-Marshall’s carefully judged performance: her eyes, at times fully expressive and at times a blank slate, provide valuable glimpses into the everyday tribulations the character must deal with, as well as the progression of the film’s main emotional arc. Though technically a bit more showy as he gets to shout on occasion, Courtenay – in his first film role in four years, and arguably his most important since 2015’s 45 Years – is also cleverly measured in his portrayal of a man who, be it out of habit or a certain “old school” about his role in the household, is not ready to let go of his wife.

Various notions of intimacy overlap and come into conflict as Hammer delicately explores the nuances of three generations dealing with the realization their family is broken in multiple ways. Much of it is upsetting, but never in a cruel way. Instead, the director finds the right shade of sincerity from the get-go, making even the harder-to-watch moments an organic part of the characters’ quest for clarity and not gratuitous depictions of misery designed solely to hit the viewer in the gut (in that regard, it’s not unlike Michael Haneke’s Amour). In a way, we’re on the same journey as Amanda and her family, discovering things alongside them and preparing for the same catharsis, which eventually strikes with honest precision.

Director, Screenwriter: Lance Hammer
Cast: Juliette Binoche, Tom Courtenay, Anna Calder-Marshall, Florence Hunt
Producer: Tristan Goligher, Lance Hammer
Cinematography: Adolpho Veloso
Production design: Soraya Gilanni Viljoen
Costume design: Saffron Cullane
Sound: Kent Sparling
Production companies: The Bureau, Alluvial Film Company
World sales: The Match Factory
Venue: Berlinale (Competition)
In English, French
121 minutes

Dirigida por Fernando Eimbcke en un blanco y negro nítido y con una precisión que parece natural, Moscas marca el bienvenido regreso del guionista y director a un entorno mexicano después de que su película Olmo (2025), una comedia adolescente ambientada en Estados Unidos, no tuviera mucho éxito. Moscas  evoca sus tres primeras películas extraordinarias : Temporada de patos, proyectada en Cannes; Lake Tahoe, que debutó en la competencia de Berlín, ganó el Premio Alfred Bauer y el FIPRESCI; y Club Sandwich, que ganó la Concha de Oro en San Sebastián. Esta  nueva película – impulsada por la reputación del director- parece lista para emprender un vibrante vuelo a festivales internacionales tras su estreno en la competencia berlinesa.

Olga (Teresita Sánchez de Dos Estaciones) es una mujer fría que vive sola,  concentrada en su impecable apartamento y los achaques y dolencias propios de la edad madura. Para completar sus gastos, le alquila una habitación a Tulio (Hugo Ramírez), cuya esposa está en un hospital cercano, pero él omite mencionar que viaja con su hijo Cristian (Bastián Escobar). Padre e hijo tienen una relación conmovedoramente  cercana. Como no se permiten niños en el hospital, pasan gran parte del día vagando por las calles de la ciudad, comiendo en fondas baratas e incluso compartiendo sándwiches sentados en la acera entre los coches estacionados.

El papá tiene una energía infantil cuando está con el niño. Cristian descubre Defensores cósmicos un video juego de los noventa en una maquinita, que le encanta y se convertirá en su obsesión pero Tulio es firme con el dinero que apenas alcanza para la medicina de su esposa.

Olga no tarda en descubrir la presencia del niño en su casa y le da un ultimátum a Tulio. Una de sus reglas es no escuchar historias sobre las enfermedades de los pacientes, y no se ablanda ni siquiera cuando Tulio se ve obligado a irse de la ciudad para ganar más dinero. La dignidad que Ramírez aporta a este papel es asombrosa, pero no conmueve en absoluto a Olga. En su descorazonada  autoprotección se percibe un eco de Dora, la cínica escritora de cartas para analfabetos en Estación Central (1998) de Walter Salles, obra fundamental del cine latinoamericano. Pero así como Dora se involucra, a pesar suyo, en la búsqueda del padre del niño, Olga se ve arrastrada por el deseo desesperado de Cristian de ver a su madre. Aunque antes amenazó a Tulio  con llamar a la policía si no desocupaba su habitación el fin de semana, ahora infringe la ley con total naturalidad, consiguiendo un documento falso para que Cristian pueda entrar al hospital.
Aunque el cambio de actitud de Olga con el chico es fácilmente previsible como parte de la estructura de la película, su propia transformación interior está presentada  de forma hermosa y sorprendente. El lenguaje corporal de Sánchez lo dice todo cuando pone un disco y baila chachachá con Cristian, abriendo por primera vez su rostro en una sonrisa deslumbrante.

La película está llena de batallas, pequeñas y grandes, y habrá ganadores y perdedores. Como sabemos desde el principio, la lucha de Olga contra los molestos insectos voladores es desigual; nunca los vencerá. Los repetidos y obsesivos retornos a la maquinita de los Defensores Cósmicos son el equivalente literal de esta lucha interminable, que involucra a los tres personajes antes de que la historia termine. En una escena muy conmovedora por su poca dramatización, Tulio usa a los invasores espaciales auto multiplicadores del juego para explicarle a su hijo cómo proliferan las células cancerosas en el cuerpo humano.

Esta es también una película de pocas palabras y muchas imágenes impactantes. La cinematografía en blanco y negro de Maria Secco ilumina el edificio de apartamentos con sus antiguas ventanas y escaleras, convirtiéndolo en un territorio familiar, pero conservando la sensación de algo extraído del pasado. En lugar de música, Eimbcke da espacio al ingenioso diseño de sonido de Javier Umpierrez, creando un universo urbano ruidoso con sirenas, alarmas y ruido de vecinos. Es una elección que subraya la sensación de inquietud en el fondo que nunca pasa.

Director: Fernando Eimbcke
Guion: Fernando Eimbcke, Vanessa Garnica
Productores: Eréndira Nuñez, Michel Franco, Fernando Eimbcke
Elenco: Teresita Sánchez, Bastian Escobar, Hugo Ramírez
Fotografía: Maria Secco
Diseño de producción: Alfredo Wigueras
Diseño de vestuario: Gabriela Fernández
Edición: Salvador Reyes Zúñiga, Fernando Eimbcke
Diseño de sonido: Javier Umpierrez
Compañías productoras: Teorema (México), Kinotitian (Mexico)
Ventas internacionales: Alpha Violet (France)
Berlín Film Festival (Competencia)
En español
99 minutos

Directed in sharp-edged black-and-white with seemingly effortless precision by Fernando Eimbcke, it marks the writer-director’s welcome return to a Mexican setting after his 2025 Olmo, a teen comedy set in the United States, made few waves. Flies harks back to his first three extraordinary films — Temporada de patos shown at Cannes, Lake Tahoe which bowed in Berlin competition where it won the Alfred Bauer Prize and the FIPRESCI award, and Club Sandwich which won the Golden Shell at San Sebastián. Pushed by the director’s reputation, the new film looks ready to embark on a lively flight to global festivals after another premiere in Berlin competition.

Olga (Teresita Sanchez from Dos Estaciones) is a stone-cold woman living alone who is entirely focused on her tidy apartment and her middle-aged aches and pains. To make ends meet, she rents out a room to Tulio (Hugo Ramirez), whose wife is in a nearby hospital, but he omits to mention he is traveling with his son Cristian (Bastian Escobar). The father and son have a disarmingly close relationship; since children are not allowed in the hospital, they spend much of the day roaming the streets of the city, eating in cheap diners, and even sharing sandwiches sitting on the curb between parked cars. Dad has a childlike energy while he’s with the boy. But he draws the line at wasting money, which is barely enough to buy his wife’s medicine, when Cristian discovers an arcade game he loves from the 1990’s, Cosmic Defenders Pro. It is to become his obsession.

It doesn’t take long for Olga to discover the boy’s presence in her house and she gives Tulio an ultimatum. One of her house rules is that she will not listen to stories of patients’ illnesses, and she cuts them no slack even when Tulio is forced to leave town to earn more money. The dignity Ramirez brings to this role is astounding, but it doesn’t move Olga a bit. In her heartless self-protectiveness one feels the echo of Dora, the cynical letter-writer for the illiterate in Walter Salles’ Central Station (1998), a seminal work of Latin American cinema. But just as Dora got involved in spite of herself in a young boy’s search for his father, Olga finds herself drawn into Cristian’s all-consuming desire to see his mother. Where once she threatened Tulio with calling in the police if he didn’t vacate his room by the weekend, now she casually breaks the law, brandishing a false document to get Cristian into the hospital.

Though Olga’s turn-around with the boy is easily foreseeable as part of the film’s structure, her own inner transformation is beautifully and surprisingly rendered. Sanchez’s body language tells all when she puts on a record and dances the cha cha with Cristian, her face opening up for the first time in a wide-open smile that dazzles.

The film is full of battles, small and big, and there will be winners and losers. As we know from the beginning, Olga’s fight against pesky flying insects is unequal; she will never defeat them. Repeated, obsessive returns to the Cosmic Defenders machine is the literal equivalent of this endless struggle, involving all three characters before the story is through. In a scene that is deeply moving because it is so underplayed, Tulio uses the self-multiplying space invaders from the game to explain to his son how cancer cells proliferate in the human body.

It is also a film of few words and many resonating images. Maria Secco’s black-and-white cinematography illuminates the apartment complex with its aging windows and stairs, turning it into familiar territory while leaving the feeling of a world out of the past. In place of music, Eimbcke gives space to Javier Umpierrez’s astute sound design, creating a noisy urban universe of sirens, alarms and neighbors’ noise. It is a choice that underlines the feeling of background uneasiness that never stops.

Director: Fernando Eimbcke
Screenwriters: Fernando Eimbcke, Vanessa Garnica
Producers: Erendira Nunez, Michel Franco, Fernando Eimbcke
Cast: Teresita Sanchez, Bastian Escobar, Hugo Ramirez
Cinematography: Maria Secco
Production design: Alfredo Wigueras
Costume design: Gabriela Fernandez
Editing: Salvador Reyes Zuniga, Fernando Eimbcke
Sound design: Javier Umpierrez
Production companies: Teorema (Mexico), Kinotitian (Mexico)
World sales: Alpha Violet (France)
Venue: Berlin Film Festival (Competition)
In Spanish
99 minutes

Saccharine is a female-centric story featuring virtually no male characters, but that feels like an incidental detail in a universal plot that smartly riffs on classic horror lineage. With its carnal excesses and queer feminist undertow, it will inevitably draw comparisons to Coralie Fargeat’s indie sensation The Substance (2024) and the work of Julia Ducournau (Raw, Titane). Which is no bad thing, though James relies more on familiar paranormal genre tropes than either. Her plot feels overstuffed with ideas at times, not all of them fully coherent, but the central premise is witty and timely, and production credits are consistently excellent. Premiered in Sundance ahead of its European festival debut in Berlin this week, this superior shocker has already been bought for streaming release in several markets, and is likely to travel widely.

Saccharine wears its Australian locations lightly, with an unnamed Melbourne serving as non-specific city backdrop, and an international cast sharing a range of accents. In a neat piece of self-aware casting, Gray’s Anatomy alumni Midori Francis stars as Hana, a medical student who routinely slices up dead bodies in class. Raised by parents with dysfunctional issues around food, Hana now struggles with her own weight, body image and binge-eating. She also has a crush on super-athletic gym teacher Alanya (Madeleine Madden) but is too under-confident to ever act on it, despite body-positive encouragement from classmate Josie (Danielle Macdonald), who repeatedly reminds that fat is feminist issue.

Salvation, or maybe damnation, comes calling in the form of an old school friend, once overweight but now super-slim, who recommends a mysterious new diet pill to Hana. The price is way too steep for a poor first-year student, but Hana finds an ingenious solution, acquiring a single pill and breaking down its chemical make-up in the college lab. Her shock discovery: the core ingredients are human ashes. A resourceful Hana then takes a leaf out of Victor Frankenstein’s science manual by cooking up her own home-made version of the diet drug, using stolen body parts from one of her classroom corpses, a morbidly obese woman cruelly nicknamed Big Bertha by the students.

At first, Hana’s crazy chemistry experiment on herself seems to work wonders. She loses weight, gains in self-confidence, and scores a hot date with Alanya. But her incredible shrinking woman act comes with unforeseen side effects both physical and mental. Most bizarrely, she is soon being terrorised by the invisible spirit of Bertha’s bloated, decaying corpse, who hijacks Hana’s body during manic “sleep eating” food binges.

Drawing on Buddhist folklore, as outlined by Hana’s Japanese mother Kimie (Showko Showfukutei), Bertha has become a “hungry ghost”, an anguished wandering spirit with an insatiable appetite. In a further quirky piece of arbitrary plotting, Hana can only see her phantom stalker as a reflection in specific convex surfaces, chiefly spoons. Adhering to classic psycho-horror tradition, James initially leaves the question open as to whether her traumatised heroine is hallucinating these nightmarish visitations.

In her final act, James pushes Hana through a head-spinning assault course of risky escalations, shock reveals and gloriously grotesque visual effects. Already shaky, any sense of narrative logic is stretched to snapping point here. The underlying body-positive message arguably gets a little muddled too, in a macabre fat-shaming subplot based on the director’s real family history.

But despite a few minor inconsistencies, Saccharine is a twist-heavy treat, visually rich and heaped with generously treacly dollops of deluxe-pulp energy. This lurid intensity is amplified by cinematographer Charlie Sarroff’s hyper-saturated colour palette, which has the overripe glow of rotting fruit, plus the disorienting loops and sense-frazzling jump cuts of editor Sean Lahiff. Credit is also due to electronic composer Hannah Peel’s sinister, discordant score and editor Robert Mackenzie’s alluringly slimy, squelchy, gloopy sound design. Bon appetit.

Director, screenwriter: Natalie Erika James
Cast: Midori Francis, Danielle Macdonald, Madeleine Madden, Showko Showfukutei, Robert Taylor
Cinematographer: Charlie Sarroff
Editor: Sean Lahiff
Music: Hannah Peel
Sound design: Robert Mackenzie
Production design: Josephine Wagstaff
Producers: Anna McLeish, Sarah Shaw, Natalie Erika James
Production companies: Carver Films (Aus), Thrum Films (Aus), Stan (Aus)
World sales: XYZ Films (Los Angeles)
Venue: Berlin Film Festival (Special Midnight)
In English
112 minutes

The plot revolves around the young Samaan (Marwan Waleed), who works as a security guard in an apartment building in Cairo. But this is no ensemble picture like Marwan Hamed’s The Yacoubian Building was. This is very much about this one man alone, and the inner turmoil that is part of his life: like many of his generation, Samaan lost his parents to the religious violence that has plagued the Arab world for years (in addition to Egypt, the film is produced by Libya, Tunisia and Qatar, with Germany as the European partner). As a result, he’s quite withdrawn, rarely interacting with people unless it’s strictly necessary. Then, one day, he makes the acquaintance of Fatimah (Noha Foad), and a friendship might blossom between the two, provided the young man’s trauma doesn’t get in the way…

The protagonist’s chosen profession is the ideal parallel for his psychological journey: while the image of the building may conjure a certain vastness and grandeur, it’s also a bit of a claustrophobic maze, matching the shifting moods that Samaan goes through on a daily basis as he tries to reconcile the pain of the past with his hopes for the future. Waleed’s performance, at times understated and then thrillingly expressive when required, captures all the nuances of a damaged individual with depth and care, delivering a portrait of a layered human being without ever descending into human-shaped trauma porn. Whether he’s alone or sharing the screen with the equally talented Foad, he’s a magnetic presence for the entire two-hour duration of this genre piece that is also equal parts compelling character study.

Besides Waleed, the real star player is Hammad himself who, besides writing, directing and producing the picture, is also credited as the production and costume designer. But this is no ego-fueled endeavor (for an example of the latter, festival veterans will certainly remember the endless repetition of Vincent Gallo’s name in the opening credits for his directorial efforts, and the sniggering that came about as a result). Instead, every task blends seamlessly into the bigger project, as all departments involved come together to create an epically intimate thriller of the soul.

Whether it’s Mohammed El Sharkawy’s cinematography, where the mundane and the nightmarish coexist with ease, or Muhamed Eltaweal’s similarly versatile work with the sound design, they’re all valuable building blocks in the crafting of something as deceptively powerful as the building where Samaan carries out his professional duties: much like the setting, Safe Exit is something where we can lose ourselves for a couple of hours, as we rely on the main character’s journey inward to lead us back outside, fulfilled after having spent this time with him, his inherited pain and the path that may help him begin to process it.

Director, Screenwriter: Mohammed Hammad
Cast: Marwan Waleed, Noha Foad, Hazem Essam
Producers: Kholoud Saad, Mohammed Hammad
Cinematography: Mohammed El Sharkawy
Production design: Mohammed Hammad, Nora Fawzy
Costume design: Mohammed Hammad
Sound: Muhamed Eltaweal
Production companies: Pariedolia Productions, Nomadis Images, Mayana Films, Wika Productions
World sales: MAD World
Venue: Berlinale (Panorama)
In Arabic
113 minutes

Alper has earned festival attention from his first film Beyond the Hill, which bowed in the Berlinale Forum in 2012; his second feature Frenzy (2015) won the Special Jury Prize in Venice. In 2022 Burning Days appeared, a searing drama of corruption in a small Turkish town, seen through the eyes of an idealistic young prosecutor. Taking a new tack, Salvation is conceived as a choral film in which the viewpoint shifts dramatically from one character to the next, from the reasonable and conciliatory to the fanatic, even though they belong to the same clan and village.

However, audiences outside Turkey might need to do some background reading regarding the area of eastern Anatolia where many Kurdish people reside, and their evolving relationship to the armed extremists in their midst, as well as the state police. Salvation appears to offer the snapshot of a moment in time when Kurdish terrorism is on the wane and the local population is actively aiding the police as “guardians” of the territory. As the sun rises over a breath-taking terraced landscape, a group of men with rifles have killed two terrorists in the hills. As though it was a hunting expedition, they load the bodies onto a truck for the police and congratulate each other on a good night’s work.

But even as the threat of armed conflict diminishes, another fearsome source of violence arises out of the past. An ancient stone village dug into a hillside has been split into two parts in the course of a long-running and senseless blood feud. Now the Hazerans, who inhabit the upper village, fall prey to a false preacher who calls himself a prophet and spurs them to violence against the Bezaris living in the lower village. The Hazerans herd sheep; the Bezaris (maligned as “traders and usurers”) farm the land; and the unfounded rumor is that the Bezaris intend to steal the Hazerans’ land.

At first the unrest seems limited to a few hotheads in the upper village and the gossip of bigoted women; it is contained by the modern young sheikh whose sermons during prayers cool things off. But soon crazy old Mesut (Caner Cindoruk) starts having nightmares he takes for visions and assumes spiritual leadership of the Hazerans. His platform is to rid the area of the Bezaris once and for all – and the majority of the community gets behind him, precipitating the film’s terrifying conclusion.

Though mainly told through the actions and reactions of the men in the village, women also have a role to play. Mesut’s wife Gulsum (Ozlen Tas) has given him four children and is pregnant again, yet her husband convinces himself she had an affair with the Bezari leader when she lived in his house as a servant and must be purified. In stark contrast is Fatma (Naz Goktan), the wife of a hardliner and an active guardian herself, who shamelessly slanders Gulsum on every occasion. Not even children are spared the fanatic fury of Mesut’s holy war, giving the story an increasingly darker vibe when the pressure cooker of hatred explodes.

The barbaric scenes spring vividly to life in the endless rock formations of an Anatolian valley, eerily washed in ghostly black-and-white night photography (Ahmet Sesigurgil and Baris Aygen share cinematography credit). Composer Christiaan Verbeek (Two Prosecutors) matches his score to the primordial sounds of drumbeats and the very unique religious chanting of the Kurdish cult.

Director, screenwriter: Emin Alper
Producer: Nadir Operli
Cast: Caner Cindoruk, Berkay Ates, Feyyaz Duman, Naz Goktan, Ozlem Tas
Cinematography: Ahmet Sesigurgil, Baris Aygen
Production design: Nadide Argun Van Uden
Costume design: Gulsah Yuksel
Editing: Ozcan Vardar
Music: Christiaan Verbeek
Sound design: Nardi Van Dijk
Production companies: Liman Film (Turkey) in association with Bir Film (Turkey), Circe Films (Netherlands), Meltem Films (France), TS Productions (France), Horsefly Films (Greece), Second Land (Sweden)
World sales: Lucky Number (France)
Venue: Berlin Film Festival (Competition)
In Kurdish, Turkish
120 minutes

Fariat returns to the Berlinale program six years after launching his prize-winning debut at the festival, Future Drei (No Hard Feelings) (2020). In the interim he has directed and produced various TV projects, some through his production company Jünglinge Film, which specialises in framing feminist, queer and post-migration stories in a glossy “activist popcorn” package. Prosecution ticks all those boxes and more, never forgetting its primary duty to entertain. Deluxe genre elements and timely themes should help it hook more festival slots and wider audiences following its buzzy Berlin launch.

Prosecution centres on Seyo Kim (Chen Emilie Yan), an ambitious young German-Korean state prosecutor currently on workplace probation in a small East German town. Bound by strict legal definitions of neutrality, her work often involves defending violent extremists who brazenly wear Nazi symbols in court. But such is the price of working for “the most objective system in the world,” as the office mantra goes. This blind justice approach frequently brings her into conflict with campaigning lawyers like Alexandra Tiedemann (Julia Jentsch), who approaches her job from a more overtly left-leaning social-justice angle.

But Seyo’s faith in her lofty principles start to unravel after she is targeted in a potentially lethal racist attack, knocked off her bicycle then set ablaze with a flaming Molotov cocktail. Fariat stages this set-piece sequence with aplomb, using kinetic camerawork, rumbling sound design and menacing music for extra dramatic impact. Burned, battered but unbowed, Seyo begins by entrusting the case to local police and her fellow prosecutors. When they appear to be dragging their feet, she takes on the hunt for the attackers herself, risking her career by defying strict office protocol and stealing classified files. As an extra precaution, she also begins firearms training and buys a jet-black bulletproof car, which nudges Prosecution teasingly close to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo territory.

Enlisting her former courtroom sparring partner Tiedemann as her lawyer, Seyo initially brings charges against a single far-right extremist, Pascal Röder (Max Krause). But as the trial progresses, she starts to unearth disquieting connections between police, public officials and a wider network of neo-Nazis linked to attacks on immigrants and asylum seekers. Legal dramas tend towards dry procedurals, but Fariat milks these scenes for maximum tension, amplified by Seyo’s growing awareness of lurking threats and a disturbing, Kafka-eque clash with racist traffic cops.

Around this central legal drama, Fariat and his screenwriters give Seyo a skimpy back story, including an underwritten relationship with a girlfriend, Min-Su (Kotbong Yang), which could have more narrative weight. The neo-Nazi characters and their entourage are little more than one-dimensional cyphers too. Nobody coming to see Prosecution will want to empathise with racist thugs, of course, but some psychological insight into their hateful motivation might at least have deepened the dramatic waters. All the same, this is a glossy, gripping, good-looking thriller overall. Yan proves especially impressive in her debut screen role, smoothing out the occasional bumpy plot wobble with her magnetic ninja-level intensity.

Prosecution is not directly based on real events but it does draw on numerous true crimes over the past 25 years, including a series of nationwide murders committed by fascist terror group National Socialist Underground between 2000 and 2007. In the subsequent trial, several police and intelligence officers were exposed as far-right sympathisers. Fariat ends this saga of karmic justice on a cautiously hopeful note, but makes it clear this is just one battle in a never-ending war. Indeed, his open-ended finale seems to signpost a possible sequel or TV series spin-off, with Seyo as a relentless angel of vengeance in the Lisbeth Salander mode.

Director: Faraz Shariat
Screenwriters: Claudia Schaefer, Jee-Un Kim, Dr. Sun-Ju Choi
Cast: Chen Emilie Yan, Julia Jentsch, Alev Irmak, Arnd Klawitter, Sebastian Urzendowsky, Kathrin Angerer, Max Krause, Kotbong Yang
Cinematography: Lotta Kilian
Editing: Friederike Hohmuth
Music: Gabríel Ólafs
Sound Design: Henning Hein
Production Design: Dario Mendez Acosta
Producers: Paulina Lorenz, Jorgo Narjes, Faraz Shariat
Production company: Jünglinge Film (Germany)
World sales: New Europe Film Sales
In German, Korean
113 minutes

The project focuses on the Hilton Addis Ababa, founded by Emperor Haile Selassie in the 1960s as a symbol of Ethiopia’s newfound international status. Over the years, it also came to be seen as a monument to self-aggrandizing, a portrait of the side of Helassie’s personality that is seldom discussed by Ethiopians. And yet, it is that side Beckermann is interested in, as it was a biography of the Emperor that first caught her attention many years back and ignited a curiosity that is at the base of this film.

In fact, while she generally maintains a passive role behind the camera, in this case she intervenes directly with voiceover and interactions with the hotel staff, in part also to explain that, while she strives for as complete a documentary as possible on this specific subject, her perspective will undoubtedly be affected by her being a white European woman, a visitor from the colonizing continent looking into the past and present (and, in a few shots, the future) of a country that has had a tense relationship with Europe.

Amusingly, the film begins with a shot of a zookeeper standing next to a caged lion that is essentially taking a nap. Perhaps it is a foreshadowing of what is to come, as we see this majestic creature in a less than threatening position, and Wax & Gold intends to peel back the layers of the aura surrounding the building at its center and the man who had it commissioned. But crucially, Beckermann never aims to deconstruct with malicious intent: yes, the hotel has complicated connotations, but its prestige remains in plain sight, and the director acknowledges that.

Over the course of an hour and a half, archive footage from decades past alternates with present day interviews, highlighting the different phases of Ethiopian society’s evolution across the second half of the 20th century. In that sense, it is perhaps a more conventional approach compared to something cheeky like Mutzenbacher (where male interviewees engaged in improvisational auditions based on a scandalous erotic novel), but it remains true to Beckermann’s desire to meaningfully and thoughtfully engage with society and culture.

Naturally, Wax & Gold does not provide a definitive portrait of the nation, nor did it ever try to do so. What it does do is deliver a clever blend of differing perspectives to meditate on how the country’s past has shaped its present, and how the overlapping elements from disparate decades may come into play as one ponders the future. And perhaps it will be as inspiring to new generations as the Emperor’s biography was to the director – a new jumping-off point for further musings on how to analyze one of the byproducts of the colonial age in an informative, enriching and at times also quite entertaining manner.

Director, Screenwriter: Ruth Beckermann
Producers: Ruth Beckermann, Carlo Hintermann, Gerardo Panichi
Cinematography: Johannes Hammel
Sound: Andreas Hamza
Production companies: Ruth Beckermann Filmproduktion, Citrullo International
World sales: Celluloid Dreams
Venue: Berlinale (Berlinale Special Presentation)
In German, English, Italian, Amharic
97 minutes

Blondé’s second feature shares an ominously brooding tone with Spike Lee’s 25th Hour (2002), another slow-burn drama about the crushing anticipation of imminent justice and incarceration. Devoid of shock twists, the fatalistic outcome is set in stone from the opening scene. So it is a credit to the film-makers, and their two excellent leads Jan Hammenecker and Arieh Worthalter, that they maintain a compelling thread of suspense throughout. Even though the narrative begins to drift a little in its second half, this is still a highly atmospheric, closely observed critique of corporate greed, snake-oil capitalism and performative alpha-male confidence. Fresh from its world premiere in the main Berlinale competition, Dust should enjoy healthy awards buzz and art-house audience potential.

Set in 1999, the film’s lightly scrambled, non-linear plot opens with company bosses Luc (Hammenecker) and Geert (Worthalter) flying high, jet-setting around the world pitching their new speech-recognition software. But soon they are crashing back to earth when news starts to breaks about the fraudulent shell companies they used to artificially inflate their own market value, duping thousands of local investors in the process. At a fraught emergency board meeting, the duo are forced to agree that surrender to the police is now inevitable.

With their fates sealed, Luc and Geert spend their final weekend of freedom in a fugue state of shame, blame and growing paranoia. Dishevelled and distraught, Luc returns home to his fully complicit wife Alma (Fania Sorel), pays a guilty visit to one of the company’s biggest investors, repeatedly tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter, and other small gestures of redemption. At the same time, he also takes great pains to conceal a hefty stash of illicit cash, beyond the reach of future police search warrants.

Meanwhile, the suavely inscrutable Geert retreats to his chic modernist villa with his young driver/lover Kenneth (Thibaud Dooms), the transactional nature of their relationship increasingly clear as the power balance shifts. This is a fascinating subplot, with a deliciously sour hint of Fassbinder. When his vague, impractical plan to flee abroad falls apart, Geert settles instead for trying to make his peace with family investors before the storm breaks.

Screenwriter Tijssens stresses the importance of this “queer time” interlude, an alternative angle on heteronormative notions of success and failure. Luc and Geert certainly have different lifestyles, but in key essentials they seem pretty similar. Both are status-driven egotists with flexible ethics and refined bourgeois tastes. When the pressure starts to bite, both become paranoid. Their reunion, late in the film, takes place in a humbling sea of mud, which plays both a literal and symbolic role in the plot. Dust might equally have been called Mud.

The true story behind Dust is pretty compelling. The film’s oddly evasive Berlin press notes simply call it a “very free interpretation” of a real financial scandal, with no further details. In truth, the plot closely mirrors the fall of Jo Lernout and Pol Hauspie, co-founders of Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products NV, hailed as one of Belgium’s most successful technology companies. The pair had ambitious plans to create a kind of European Silicon Valley in Flanders, until the Wall Street Journal exposed their history of fake transactions and improper accounts. In April 2001, Lernout and Hauspie, plus former CEO Gaston Bastiaens, were arrested and later sentenced to five years in jail. The company filed for bankruptcy soon afterwards.

Handsomely painted in autumnal shades by cinematographer Frank van den Eeden, with Poland standing in for Belgium, all swept along by Andrea Balency-Béarn’s powerfully gloomy score, Dust is a classy psychodrama only slightly weakened by its rambling, looping second half. Blondé and Tijssens never present Luc and Geert as sympathetic victims, but nor are they outright villains either. Just cogs in a bigger machine, brought down by their own hype and hubris at the dawn of the toxic tech-bro era. In that sense, this late 20th century period piece speaks very clearly to the current climate.

Director: Anke Blondé
Screenplay: Angelo Tijssens
Cast: Arieh Worthalter, Jan Hammenecker, Thibaud Dooms, Anthony Welsh, Fania Sorel, Janne Desmet, Fabrizio Rongione, Aldona Jankowska, Verona Verbakel
Cinematography: Frank van den Eeden
Editing: David Verdurme, Lambis Charalampidis
Production design: Stijn Verhoeven, Ewa Mroczkowska
Music: Andrea Balency-Béarn
Producer: Dries Phylpo
Production company: A Private View (Belgium)
World sales: LevelK, Denmark
Venue: Berlin Film Festival (Competition)
In Dutch, English, French
115 minutes

With his wonderful eye for the subtly grotesque, Schleinzer makes good use of his long career as a casting director for legends of the offbeat like Ulrich Seidl, Michael Haneke and Jessica Hausner, endowing his own characters with a humorous eccentricity that makes the audience wonder. Award-studded actress Sandra Hüller, acclaimed for her performances in Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest, won a Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 2006 Berlinale for Requiem, and her transformation into a grubby soldier and farmer with a bullet wound disfiguring her face, walking the razor’s edge of gender identity, should surely make her a contender this year, too.

The film also shows the director’s creative growth from his 2011 film Michael, a Haneke-esque drama based on a real-life child abductor, and his 2018 Angelo, the story of Angelo Soliman, an African boy sold into slavery who luck drew into Austrian aristocratic society of the 18th century. Here again in Rose, there is a historical source for an outrageous tale out of the past, which in the capable hands of screenwriters Schleinzer and Alexander Brom turns out to have very modern vibes in its call to individual freedom.

In the wake of a great war, a tired and battle-scarred soldier traipses through the German countryside, which is eerily littered with screaming skeletons. This single visual detail tells it all – or almost all – about the soldier’s past. The honeyed voice of an off-screen narrator (Marisa Growaldt) explains that after ten years Rose has done with soldiering and is ready to settle down.

She enters a village as an odd-looking man, brandishing a document that shows she is the legal heir to a decrepit farmhouse in the woods. In the midst of the tall, dark-bearded residents, some wearing primitive masks, she stands out like a sore thumb. The joke is that no one sees what the audience realizes at once: Rose is a woman in trousers. Her disguise is as flimsy as her little boat-shaped hat that passes for a military helmet, yet for the longest time no member of the God-fearing community questions the “gentleman’s” claim to his ancestors’ land.

The steep-roofed house needs a lot of repair, but Rose has the money to hire two laborers full-time. Handy with a rifle, her reputation grows when she shoots a marauding bear and little by little, the villagers relax their suspicions. Things get interesting when one of them proposes the gentleman marry one of his five daughters — and Rose madly accepts. They are wedded in church and Suzanne, the awkward young bride, rides home with her husband on a cow-drawn wagon.

Now viewers hold their breath as they wait to see how long it will take for Rose to be unmasked. Having sex is a problem, especially when Suzanne (played by the delightful Caro Braun) turns out to be neither as shy nor as doltish as she first seems. In fact, she soon makes the stunning announcement they are expecting a baby, who duly appears. The father remains a question mark but in the eyes of the trad villagers, Rose has done her reproductive duty to the community and everyone is happy.

Having reached an ideal equilibrium, the little family seems at peace. The filmmakers seem reluctant to move on to the grim third act, when the black clouds of 17^th century reality blow in, in a moving ending full of restraint and dignity.

All technical work is playful and creative. The notable black-and-white cinematography of Schleinzer regular Gerald Kerkletz makes a powerful impact on the story, cloaking the historical scenery in almost fairytale abstraction. Music (by Tara Nome Doyle) and sound design (by Manuel Grandpierre) do the rest with unexpectedly modern notes and textures.

Director: Markus Schleinzer
Screenwriters: Markus Schleinzer, Alexander Brom
Producers: Johannes Schubert, Philipp Worm, Tobias Walker, Karsten Stoter
Cast: Sandra Hüller, Caro Braun, Marisa Growaldt, Godehard Giese, Augustino Renken
Cinematography: Gerald Kerkletz
Production design: Olivier Meldinger
Costume design: Doris Bartelt
Editing: Hansjorg Weissbrich
Music: Tara Nome Doyle
Sound design: Manuel Grandpierre
Production companies: Schubert (Austria), ROW Pictures (Germany), Walker + Worm Film (Germany)
World sales: The Match Factory
Venue: Berlin Film Festival (competition)
In German
93 minutes

World premiering in Berlin this week, The Ballad of Judas Priest reveals little that any casual fan will not already know. All the same, their supercharged music and Wagnerian biker pageantry are never less than entertaining. In droll tonal contrast, the band members are deadpan, self-effacing and unpretentious interview subjects. Scoring his first directing credit alongside seasoned rockumentary maker Sam Dunn, musician Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave fame is another strong selling point, framing Priest’s legacy within his own personal and political worldview as a long-term fan.

Officially endorsed by the band and their record label, The Ballad of Judas Priest is a fairly standard promotional film at heart. The message is celebratory, the anecdotes familiar, and many of the usual suspects are here. Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters, contractually obliged to appear in every heavy rock documentary, pays warm fan-boy homage alongside Metallica’s Kirk Hammett, Smashing Pumpkins singer Billy Corgan, Lzzy Hale of Halestorm and more.

Then again, Darryl “DMC” McDaniels of veteran rap trio Run DMC is a welcome left-field inclusion, drawing parallels between heavy metal and hip-hop as related forms of underclass rebel music. Hollywood star Jack Black delivers value for money too, riffing joyously on Judas Priest’s inherently hilarious baroque’n’roll excess. Poignantly, the late Ozzy Osbourne also gives of one his last interviews, saluting his fellow metal trailblazers. “Judas Priest were just about a week behind Sabbath,” he says.

The formula may be familiar, but various elements elevate The Ballad of Judas Priest above stock rock-doc tropes. As an outspoken left-wing intellectual from an African-American family, Morello’s input as both presenter and co-director is arguably the defining factor here. He gives the band a wider socio-political context, stressing metal’s roots in the working-class communities of the West Midlands, an English region nicknamed the “Black Country” for its heavy industrial pollution. Morello also gently highlights this globalised subculture’s underrated role as a unifying force across race, gender and sexuality.

The Ballad of Judas Priest also touches on wider cultural issues beyond mere musical fashion. Most infamously, the band faced a civil lawsuit in Nevada in 1990, accused of planting subliminal messages in their songs which caused the suicide of two Texas teenagers in 1985, Raymond Belknap and James Vance. The case was dismissed, and has been well covered in previous documentaries, but it is worth revisiting. Decades later, the band’s defence attorney Bill Peterson now frames the trial as an early skirmish in the “culture wars” which have come to dominate the post-Trump, post-truth discourse. Also, as Halford reiterates here, the allegations had a crucial logical flaw: “why would you tell your fans to fucking kill themselves?”

Another key subplot is Halford’s homosexuality, always known to his bandmates but concealed from the public for decades for fear of alienating more conservative fans, particularly in the US. Despite heavily signalling his queerness via his clothes and lyrics, dressing in leather clone gear and penning innuendo-laden songs like “Raw Deal” and “Jawbreaker”, Halford officially remained in the closet, anguished and repressed but fearful of sabotaging his career. And yet, when he finally came out during an MTV interview in 1998, fan reaction was overwhelmingly supportive. “An amazing thing happened next,” says Corgan. “Nothing!”

There is a coyness to The Ballad of Judas Priest that sometimes rankles. Halford tells the film-makers he is “the most vanilla of gay guys,” but anyone who has read his gloriously explicit, emotionally raw 2020 autobiography Confess might form a different view. The singer’s struggles with drink and drug addiction are also downplayed, completely bypassing his violent, cocaine-fuelled relationship with an ex-boyfriend who ended up taking his own life. Arguably these matters are too personal and specific for a full-band documentary, but there are more general omissions too. The internal tensions that led to guitarist Ken “K.K.” Downing’s departure in 2011, for example, are never fully explained.

That said, these are minor irritations in an otherwise entertaining, big-hearted film about a likeable bunch of grizzled hard-rocking survivors. There are moving hints of mortality here, notably in guitarist Glenn Tipton’s retirement from the band in 2018 due to a Parkinson’s diagnosis, but he is still fully present here both in archive footage and as a stoic interviewee. Climaxing with Priest’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2022, which briefly reunited them with both Tipton and Downing, The Ballad of Judas Priest celebrates not just one band but also the evergreen adolescent thrill of heavy metal, and the wider global community that keeps it alive.

Directors: Sam Dunn, Tom Morello
Cast: Rob Halford, K.K. Downing, Glenn Tipton, Ian Hill, Scott Travis, Richie Faulkner, Tom Morello, Jack Black, Darryl McDaniels, Dave Grohl, Lzzy Hale, Billy Corgan, Scott Ian, Kirk Hammett, Ozzy Osbourne, Ray Brown, Sue Halford
Cinematography: Martin Hawkes
Editing: Nick Taylor, Dave McMahon
Music: Ramachandra Borcar
Producers: Sam Dunn, Scot McFadyen
Production company: Banger Films (US)
World sales: Sony Music Vision
Venue: Berlin Film Festival (Special Midnight)
In English
98 minutes

She’s on similar turf with her second feature Nightborn (Yön lapsi, lit. “Child of the Night”), which is already primed to travel far and wide after its Berlinale debut (per the opening credits, it will certainly get a US boost from the horror-themed streaming platform Shudder). As well it should, for while it’s not quite as idiosyncratic as Bergholm’s previous film, it’s still a good piece of Nordic genre entertainment.

The action unfolds in an unspecified Finnish locale, more exactly in the middle of a forest (the film was shot on location in Lithuania). Here we get to meet Saga (Seidi Haarla, discovered internationally in Juho Kuosmanen’s Compartment No. 6) and Jon (Rupert Grint, once again committing to the genre space in the post-Harry Potter phase of his career), a couple who have decided to relocate to the house where she spent much of her childhood. Some work needs to be done before it’s in inhabitable shape again, but the shared mood is generally one of excitement.

The two have euphoric sex out in the open, as Saga says, “Make me a mother.” Lo and behold, nine months later, she gives birth to a baby boy. The child is seemingly healthy, if unusually hairy, while the mother needs to recover due to labor complications (complete with one full frontal shot that will probably give the US ratings board a headache or two). As time passes, Saga – whose name, ironically, means “fairytale” in certain Nordic languages – starts to think something’s wrong with the baby, to the point she continues referring to her son as “it” instead of “him”. Perhaps it’s connected to local folklore and superstitions her own grandmother believed in…

While there are sporadic appearances by a supporting cast which includes the acclaimed writer and actress Pirkko Saisio (Orenda), at its core Nightborn is a two-hander between Haarla and Grint. Those who still think of the latter as the easily frightened Ron Weasley are in for a surprise as he tackles a role rooted in a rational, largely unflappable personality. Conversely, Haarla, who was very reserved in her breakthrough performance, gets to go very big as Saga’s state of mind begins to worsen. And yet, beneath the shouting and grimacing, there’s always an emotional sincerity that keeps things engaging, even as the more recognizable horror tropes start piling up (whereas Hatching refused to signpost anything, this time around there’s a bit more expository dialogue about halfway through the movie).

The humor doesn’t always land, at least not when it tries to be a bit broader (by the third time Jon mentions stereotypical Finnish behavior, you’d think this was a movie based on the Very Finnish Problems social media pages). When it blends with the horror, however, it produces an abundance of darkly tinged gags that go hand in hand with the twisted examination of motherhood that is at the film’s center. Because even when it veers towards the mainstream, Bergholm’s vision of cinema is still unquestionably her own, cheerfully lurking in its own little corner in an isolated house until it’s time to deliver the visual punches. And deliver she most certainly does.

Director: Hanna Bergholm
Screenwriter: Ilja Rautsi, Hanna Bergholm
Cast: Seidi Haarla, Rupert Grint, Pamela Tola, Pirkko Saisio, Rebecca Lacey, John Thomson
Producers: Daniel Kuitunen, Noëmie Devide
Cinematography: Pietari Peltola
Production design: Kari Kankanpää
Costume design: Tiina Kaukanen
Music: Eicca Toppinen
Sound: Alazne Ameztoy, Álex F. Capilla, Nacho Royo-Villanova
Production companies: Elokuvayhtiö Komeetta Oy, Getaway Films, Filmai LT, Bluelight Nightborn Limited
World sales: Goodfellas
Venue: Berlinale (Competition)
In Finnish, English
92 minutes

Mimicking the film’s setting, director Ilker Catak adopts a theatrical approach to telling the story, giving the actors lots of dialogue and cutting repartees to play with when they converse. This can get on the viewer’s nerves pretty fast, despite the bravura of Tansu Bicer as the introverted playwright-teacher Aziz and Ozgu Namal as his fiery and talented actress-wife Derya. Everything seems much more deliberately ambitious than in Catak’s breakthrough feature The Teachers’ Lounge, which used a schoolroom as a miniature of Turkish society and ignited Berlin’s 2023 Panorama sidebar, going on to rep Germany in an Oscar bid.  The current film bowed in Berlinale competition, after which its likely audience will be the dinner jacket arthouse regulars, especially in Germany, which is the main coproducer with France and Turkey.

Here the yellow letters of the title refer to what in other places are called pink slips, those nasty bureaucratic notices that a person is being terminated on an ongoing job. They arrive on the heels of a triumphant opening night of Aziz’s new play, which is attended by the governor in person. From the glimpse we get of the closing scene, where actors writhe in metal cages suspended from the floor and Derya declaims a speech on freedom, the play seems a bit critical of society’s leaders. But the governor’s object is apparently to get some photos with the star – a desire Derya perilously refuses to satisfy.

Whatever the real reason behind the catastrophe that follows, it engulfs not only the prominent couple but a considerable number of other teachers at the college where Aziz has his day job teaching dramaturgy. A few days earlier, his class had been nearly deserted when most of his students took part in an anti-government demonstration. Aziz doesn’t realize he’s being video-recorded when he suggests the remaining students in the classroom are free to participate, too. The tape will only surface much later in the film, when Aziz’s criminal case for abetting “terrorists” comes up in court, a Kafkaesque proceeding (mercifully brief) where he sees his chances of getting a dismissal slip through his fingers.

But first, as he waits for his long-postponed trial, he must find a way to keep his family fed, clothed and sheltered. Losing two incomes is a hard blow, but there is his elderly mother to fall back on. So the family – which includes their difficult 13-year-old daughter Ezgi (a vivid Leyla Smyrna Cabas) – leaves their comfortable life-style in Ankara to cram into granny’s old-fashioned Istanbul apartment. Thus begins a meandering saga of how the family bows to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, while the story gets farther away from the idea of corrupt politics and closer to everyone finding an individual solution to get through life. (In a curious parallel to Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice, which also featured a middle-class family on the skids, the first expense to be cut is the daughter’s music lessons.)

One can dispute the rather glib symbolism of how it all turns out in the final reel, but Catak is admirable in painting a grimly realistic picture of democracy slipping away. This time it was the intellectuals who got hit; next time it could be anyone. Judith Kaufmann’s warm cinemtography concentrates on contrasting interiors; there don’t seem to be many exteriors in the film, and there may be a reason for that. Titles inform us that we are watching “Berlin as Ankara” and later “Hamburg as Istanbul” — suggesting a production decision dictated by necessity.

Director: Ilker Catak
Screenwriters: Ilker Catak, Ayda Meryem Catak, Enis Kostepen
Producer: Ingo Fliess
Cast: Ozgu Namal, Tansu Bicer, Leyla Smyrna Cabas, Ipek Bilgin
Cinematography: Judith Kaufmann
Production design: Zazie Knepper
Costume design: Christian Rohrs
Editing: Gesa Jager
Music: Marvin Miller
Sound design: Sebastian Tesch, Florian Holzner
Production companies: if…Productions Film (Germany), Haut et Court (France), Liman Film (Turkey)
World sales: Be For Films (France)
Venue: Berlin Film Festival (competition)
In Turkish
128 minutes

World premiering in the main Berlinale competition this weekend, Rosebush Pruning is likely to divide critics. It is already being touted as this year’s Saltburn (2023), a double-edged honour but a solid marketing angle. A richly flavoured ensemble cast that includes Elle Fanning, Callum Turner, Jamie Bell, Riley Keough, a resurgent Pamela Anderson and Pulitzer-winning actor-playwright Tracy Letts should also help this MUBI-backed production gain buzzy traction following its festival run.

In gestation since the pandemic, Rosebush Pruning is a loose remake of veteran Italian director Marco Bellocchio’s semi-autobiographical debut feature Fist in the Pocket (I pugni in tasca) (1965), which opened to very mixed reviews in Venice, but later earned high praise from Pasolini, and now enjoys cult classic status. This updated version is scripted by Greek author Efthimis Filippou, best known for his serial collaborations with director Yorgos Lanthimos, which makes sense. There are certainly clear echoes of dysfunctional family tragicomedies like Dogtooth (2009) and Alps (2011) here.

The main location is a sumptuous modernist villa in the hilly hinterlands of Catalonia, close to Barcelona. Following the death of their mother (Anderson) in a macabre wolf attack, four grown-up siblings live in pressure-cooker isolation in with their blind, demanding, abusive father (Letts). Trapped in a web of co-dependency, these wealthy wastrels do little besides obsess on fancy clothes and designer labels in the same way Patrick Bateman does in American Psycho. “We are all lazy, mediocre, vapid egotists,” says Ed (Turner), the film’s ostensible narrator, and it is hard to disagree.

Ed himself is an aimless playboy with an allergy for the written word and an unhealthy fascination with Donatella Versace. His acid-tongued sister Anna (Keogh) and epileptic younger brother Robert (Lukas Gage) are similarly damaged, self-absorbed, borderline sociopaths. All three share a quasi-incestuous love-hate fixation on Jack (Bell), the favourite son and sole sibling with a vaguely normal life outside the family. The casual sexual tension between all five family members has a strong homoerotic charge and a queasy, disturbing undertow. A scene combining toothpaste, masturbation and fellatio is especially creepy, but also horribly funny to those of us with a sick sense of humour.

When Jack threatens to leave the family home to purse his budding relationship with Martha (Fanning), a contemporary classical guitar player, the already strained sibling dynamic begins to crack. Ed, Anna and Robert hatch a series of crazed schemes to thwart Jack, from sexual seduction to murder, but they mostly misfire or backfire. The plot’s tenuous claim on logic evaporates entirely during this final crescendo of carnage and violence. In any case, it is difficult to care about horrible people doing awful things to each other. All the same, there are plenty of hilariously gruesome, epically pointless deaths to savour here.

In his Berlin press notes, Aïnouz pitches Rosebush Pruning as an absurdist critique of patriarchal power and oppressive family dynamics. A nice try, though not wholly convincing. But even if this overcooked satire ultimately adds up to less than the sum of its parts, at least the parts are mostly great. The performances are all pretty strong, with Keogh reliably magnetic even in a fairly slight role, while Anderson’s ongoing art-house reinvention is a joy to witness.

British left-field electronic composer Matthew Herbert’s pounding score also boosts the bilious melodrama levels effectively, alongside some well-placed soundtrack inclusions, notably the thunderously doomy vintage Pet Shop Boys track “Paninaro”. High-calibre visual elements, from cinematographer Hélène Louvart’s saturated Pop Art colour palette to meticulously designed typographic credits that might make Wes Anderson jealous, help add up to an intoxicating sensory experience overall.

Director: Karim Aïnouz
Screenwriter: Efthimis Filippou
Cast: Callum Turner, Riley Keough, Elle Fanning, Jamie Bell, Tracy Letts, Lukas Gage, Pamela Anderson, Elena Anaya
Cinematography: Hélène Louvart
Editing: Heike Parplies, David Jancso, Ilka Janka Nagy
Music: Matthew Herbert
Production designer: Rodrigo Martirena
Costumes: Bina Daigeler
Producers: Michael Weber, Viola Fügen, Simone Gattoni, Annamaria Morelli, Andreas Wentz, Vladimir Zemtsov
Production companies: The Match Factory (Germany), Kavac Film (Italy), The Apartment (Italy), Sur Film (Spain), Crybaby (UK), MUBI (UK)
World sales: The Match Factory
Venue: Berlin Film Festival (Competition)
In English
94 minutes