Launch of the lineup for the 2023 Berlin Film Festival – The Hollywood Reporter

The Berlin International Film Festival will announce the lineup for the 2023 edition on Tuesday morning, naming 18 films that will compete for the coveted Golden and Silver Bear awards at the 73rd Berlinale.

Berlinale CEO Mariette Rissenbeek and artistic director Carlo Chatrian introduced a very international and artistic lineup on Monday with a strong focus on political cinema.

In a late version, Super power, Sean Penn and Aaron Kaufman’s documentary about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Russia’s invasion of the country, and the ongoing war, will have its world premiere in Berlin’s uncompetitive Berlinale. The documentary, produced for Vice Studios, Aldamisa Entertainment and Fifth Season, is being sold by Fifth Season worldwide.

Berlin 2023, which takes place a year after Russia’s invasion on February 24, will focus primarily on Ukraine. Even the festival’s official coat of arms will be in Ukrainian blue and gold.

During the competition, German director Christian Petzold will mark his sixth entry into the competition in Berlinale with Afire (Roter Himmel).

Petzold’s last feature, not eatwon the FIPRESCI critics’ award at Berlinale 2020 and he won the Silver Bear for best director in 2012 for Barbara. His latest team reunion Petzold with him not eat and transit Paula Beer stars in an intimate film about four young people vacationing together at a holiday home on the Baltic Sea. But all around them, wildfires raged, drawing closer and closer as the emotions in the house also threatened to flare up. Enno Trebs, Thomas Schubert, Jonas Dassler and co-star Langston Uibel.

Avant-garde German director Margarette von Trotta (Hannah Arendt, Rosenstrasse), brings another of her extraordinary portraits of women to this year’s festival. Ingeborg Bachmann – Reise in die WüsteA look at the famous Austrian poet (played by Vicky Krieps) and her relationship with Homo Farber writer Max Frisch (Ronald Zehrfeld), will debut in the Berlinale competition.

Another German veteran, director Christoph Hochhäusler, will bring his latest film, film noir. Until the End of the Night, to Berlin to play. Another established filmmaker, French director Philippe Garrel (Liberté, la nuit), will launch his new feature, focus on family plowing in the Berlin competition.

Celine’s song Past lifepremiered at Sundance, will have its international premiere in competition in Berlin.

American director John Trengove will debut the Berlinale competition with manodrome starring Jesse Eisenberg and Adrien Brody. Matt Johnson Biographical Comedy blackberryabout Canadian smartphone company, TV series disco boy directed by Giacomo Abbruzzese, by Angela Schaneliec Musicand by Ivan Sen limbo starring Australian star Simon Baker (psychiatrist) was also selected in the Berlinale competition.

Dutch-Australian director Rolf de Heer (Ten canoes, Charlie’s Country), will bow his latest, Survival of kindness, in the competition in Berlin. The film, which premiered at the Adelaide Film Festival last October, follows BlackWoman (Mwajemi Hussein), an Aboriginal woman left in a cage in the desert to die, who escapes and journeys across wilderness to reach the city.

From Japan, Your name director Makoto Shinkai will bring his new film, suzume, to Berlin, where the film will have its international premiere in competition. The feature that Crunchyroll is distributing outside of Asia, in partnership with Sony Pictures Entertainment, Wild Bunch International and Eurozoom, will mark the first Anime to be shown in the Berlinale competition since Hayao Miyazaki. The land of the soul won the Golden Bear here in 2001.

Chinese director Zhang Lu returns to the Berlin competition with his latest film, Shadowless Tower. Zhang last appeared in the competition in Berlin with Desert dream 2007 but showed the drama in 2019 Hukuoka in the Berlin Forum sidebar and his features Dooman River won best film in the Generation section at Berlin 2010.

Spanish director Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren and Mexican director Lila Avilés (maiden) both debuted the Berlinale competition with 20,000 species of bees and Totem corresponding.

Chatrian on Monday also revealed the films for the Encounters section, a lineup that competes for more experimental and avant-garde films. Among the highlights: Dustin Guy Defa’s Adults starring Michael Cera, Abbi Jacobson and Tavi Gevinson; Hungarian features white plastic sky, by directors Tibor Báóczki and Sarolta Szabó, an animated film set in post-apocalyptic Budapest in the year 2121; and echoa new documentary by South American filmmaker Tatiana Huezo, who Praying for those who were stolen earned a special nomination in the Uncertainty category of Cannes in 2021 and was selected as the nominee for best Mexican international film in last year’s Oscar race.

Family timeFirst full duration feature from Finnish director Tia Kouvo, also selected for Encounters in 2023, and excellent Korean director Hong Sangsoo, who has won consecutive Silver Bear awards with Film novelist (Grand Prize of the Jury in 2022) and Introduce (Best Scenario 2021), back in Berlin with his latest work, Domesticalso in Encounters.

The 73rd Berlinale, which runs from February 16 to 26, will open with the world premiere, without competition, of She came to mea romantic comedy film directed and written by Rebecca Miller (Maggie’s Plan) starring Peter Dinklage as a composer with a block of writers and Anne Hathaway as his wife and former therapist. Marisa Tomei, Joanna Kulig and Brian d’Arcy James co-star in the production of Protagonist Pictures.

After the comeback triumphs of the Cannes and Venice film festivals last year, all eyes will be on Berlin to see if the German film festival can successfully recover from the restrictions of the COVID era.

The performance of the film festival and its accompanying industry event, the European Film Market (EFM), will be seen as a measure of the overall health of the independent industry. More than Cannes or Venice, Berlin is an arts-focused festival with a program that celebrates films that often lack support from major studios and depend on a mosaic of independent distributors worldwide to make achieve success.