The Berlin International Film Festival is unveiling the competition lineup for its 2023 edition on Tuesday morning, naming the 18 movies that will compete for the coveted Gold and Silver Bears at the 73rd Berlinale.
Berlinale executive director Mariette Rissenbeek and artistic director Carlo Chatrian presented a very international and arthouse-heavy line-up on Monday, with a strong focus on politically-charged cinema.
In a late edition, Superpower, Sean Penn and Aaron Kaufman’s documentary on Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, the Russian invasion of the country and the ongoing war, will have its world premiere in Berlin’s out-of-competition Berlinale Special section. The doc, made for Vice Studios, Aldamisa Entertainment and Fifth Season, is being sold internationally by Fifth Season.
Berlin will have a major focus on Ukraine this year. Even the festival’s official pin will be in the Ukraine colours of blue and yellow.
In competition, German auteur Christian Petzold will mark his sixth time in the Berlinale competition with Afire (Roter Himmel).
Petzold’s last feature, Undine, won the FIPRESCI critics prize at the 2020 Berlinale, and he took the best director Silver Bear in 2012 for Barbara. His latest re-teams Petzold with his Undine and Transit star Paula Beer in an intimate drama about four young people vacationing together at a holiday home on the Baltic Sea. But all around them, forest fires are raging, getting closer and closer as the emotions inside the house also threaten to erupt. Enno Trebs, Thomas Schubert, Jonas Dassler and Langston Uibel co-star.
Pioneering German director Margarette von Trotta (Hannah Arendt, Rosenstrasse), brings another of her portraits of extraordinary women to this year’s festival. Ingeborg Bachmann – Reise in die Wüste, a look at the famed Austrian poet (played by Vicky Krieps) and her relationship to Homo Farber writer Max Frisch (Ronald Zehrfeld), will premiere in Berlinale competition.
Another German veteran, director Christoph Hochhäusler, will bring his latest, the film noir Till The End of Night, to Berlin competition. Another established filmmaker, French director Philippe Garrel (Liberté, la nuit), will premiere his new feature, the family-focused The Plough in Berlin competition.
Celine Song’s Past Lives, which premiered in Sundance, will have its international premiere in competition in Berlin.
U.S. director John Trengove will make his Berlinale competition debut with Manodrome starring Jesse Eisenberg and Adrien Brody. Matt Johnson biopic comedy BlackBerry, on the Canadian smartphone company, the drama Disco Boy from director Giacomo Abbruzzese, Angela Schaneliec’s Music, and Ivan Sen’s Limbo featuring Australian star Simon Baker (Mentalist) also made the Berlinale competition selection.
Dutch Australian director Rolf de Heer (Ten Canoes, Charlie’s Country), will bow his latest, Survival of Kindness, in competition in Berlin. The drama, which premiered at the Adelaide Film Festival last October, follows BlackWoman (Mwajemi Hussein), an aboriginal woman left in a cage in the middle of the desert to die who escapes and journeys through the wilderness to the city.
From Japan, Your Name director Makoto Shinkai will bring his new feature, Suzume, to Berlin, where it will have its international premiere in competition. The feature, which Crunchyroll is distributing outside Asia, in partnership with Sony Pictures Entertainment, Wild Bunch International and Eurozoom, will mark the first Anime to screen in Berlinale competition since Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away won the Golden Bear here back in 2001.
Chinese director Zhang Lu returns to Berlin competition with his latest, The Shadowless Tower. Zhang last appeared in Berlin competition with Desert Dream in 2007, but screened the 2019 drama Hukuoka in Berlin’s Forum sidebar, and his feature Dooman River won best film in the Generation section in Berlin in 2010.
Spanish director Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren and Mexican director Lila Avilés (The Chambermaid) both make her Berlinale competition debuts with 20,000 Species of Bees and Totem respectively. (THR)