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French sales house to market premiere ‘Bright Women’ at Rendez-Vous.

MPM Premium has boarded French drama Bright Women (Brillantes) and has unveiled more sales for Until Tomorrow, Umami and Ghosts ahead of Unifrance’s annual Rendez-Vous in Paris this week.

MPM will market premiere Bright Women for buyers at Rendez-Vous, where it will kick off global sales for the film ahead of its debut in French theatres on January 18 via Alba Films.

The first feature from Sylvie Gautier, Bright Women follows a housekeeper and mother who is asked to lead a movement of unionised workers and finds herself in a moral dilemma.

French sales house to market premiere ‘Bright Women’ at Rendez-Vous.

MPM Premium has boarded French drama Bright Women (Brillantes) and has unveiled more sales for Until Tomorrow, Umami and Ghosts ahead of Unifrance’s annual Rendez-Vous in Paris this week.

MPM will market premiere Bright Women for buyers at Rendez-Vous, where it will kick off global sales for the film ahead of its debut in French theatres on January 18 via Alba Films.

The first feature from Sylvie Gautier, Bright Women follows a housekeeper and mother who is asked to lead a movement of unionised workers and finds herself in a moral dilemma.

Prizes will be presented at the festival’s Summer Special event.

Dasha Nekrasova’s The Scary Of Sixty-First and Alice Diop’s We have won the best first feature and documentary awards respectively at the Berlin International Film Festival, which launches its Summer Special event tomorrow (July 9).

Although the 71st edition of the festival took place in March – as an online, industry-only event – the winners of these two prize categories have been held back until the eve of the public summer event, which will host outdoor screenings from July 9-20.

US horror The Scary Of Sixty-First initially screened in the...

Iranian cinema has developed its own distinctive style. Almost every film originating in this Middle Eastern country (or at least those which reach the West) uses multiple levels of narration, often crossing the fourth wall, using the meta levels, or connecting different worlds. No wonder, since for many years Iranian creators have been looking for creative solutions to deal with censorship, iron rules setting the boundaries for art and the authoritarian apparatus terrorising people with constant surveillance and the threat of many years of imprisonment. The full-length debut of Bardia Yadegari and Ehsan Mirhoddrini, District Terminal, is a film that combines all these features of Iranian cinema, but is also an attempt to fortune-tell the future of Iran as observed in the crooked mirror of political and social commentary.

Peyman is a poet who faces not only the inaccessibility of the state apparatus that prevents him from spreading his artistic wings,...

Films that take place in the future but are not sci-fi-like at all, seem to become a tendency gradually, with filmmakers using the future to present their usually harsh but realistic comments about the present. Bardia Yadegari and Ehsan Mirhosseini implement this approach within their delirious narrative, in a rather personal film that was shot in their homes, with them and their friends and relatives playing the parts.

District Terminal is screening at Berlinale

The story takes place in the near future, where pollution and a lethal virus have reduced the city to a dump and the population to emigrate, mostly to the US, or live in constant quarantine. Peyman is a poet and a drug addict who lives with his mother in a neighborhood that has been placed under round-the-clock surveillance by quarantine officers. His life moves in a “Groundhog Day”-style, with him running around the block, trying...

The feature by Iranian directors Bardia Yadegari and Ehsan Mirhosseini is world-premiering in the Encounters section of the 71st Berlinale. Tehran in the near future. Pollution and a lethal virus have reduced the city to a dump and forced the population to emigrate or live in quarantine. Peyman is a poet and a junkie who lives with his mother in a neighbourhood that has been placed under round-the-clock surveillance by quarantine officers. Struggling to survive, Peyman divides his days between spending time with his no-less-bewildered teenage daughter, a woman living in the USA whom he has married in order to emigrate, conversations with his two closest friends Ramin and Mozhgan, and an illicit affair with a girl with whom he is hopelessly in love. Rumours of an imminent war are growing and one by one Peyman’s friends are departing, leaving him alone and tormented by ghosts. In which world does.

The producer and actors-writers worked on Mohammad Rasoulof’s 2020 Berlinale Golden Bear winner There Is No Evil.

Paris-based MPM Premium has acquired world sales rights to Iranian directors Bardia Yadegari and Ehsan Mirhosseini’s drama District Terminal ahead of its world premiere in the Berlinale’s Encounters competition next week.

Drawing on Iran’s current reality but set in a dystopian future, it revolves around a poet living with his mother in an old part of Tehran, struggling with drug addiction, poverty and a love affair that has exhausted him.

Yadegari, who plays the protagonist, and Mirhosseini shot the allegorical,...

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Berlinale has developed a new festival format for its 71st edition.

In 2021, the Competition, Berlinale Special & Berlinale Series, Encounters, Berlinale Shorts, Panorama, Forum & Forum Expanded, Generation and Perspektive Deutsches Kino have been reduced in size due to the pandemic.

The majority of the Film Selection will be available for viewing online by industry representatives and accredited members of the press during the Industry Event from March 1–5, 2021.

During the Summer Special from June 9–20, 2021, Berlinale audiences will be able to see the majority of the films selected by all the sections in numerous cinema screenings in the presence of the filmmakers.

Limbo by by Cheang Soi

Let’s have a look at the Asian Films in the different sections of the Festival:

Competition:

Ghasideyeh gave sefid (Ballad of a White Cow)

Iran / France

by Behtash Sanaeeha, Maryam Moghaddam *World premiere

Guzen to sozo (Wheel of Fortune...

This year’s Berlin International Film Festival will look a bit different this year, with a virtual edition taking place March 1-5 for industry and press, then a public, in-person edition kicking off in June.

The complete lineup has now been unveiled, including Céline Sciamma’s highly-anticipated Portrait of a Lady on Fire follow-up Petite Maman, a surprise new Hong Sang-soo feature, the latest work from Ryūsuke Hamaguchi, along with new projects by Radu Jude, Xavier Beauvois, Dominik Graf, Pietro Marcello, Ramon Zürcher & Silvan Zürcher, and more.

Check out each section below.

Competition Tiles

“Albatros” (Drift Away)

France

by Xavier Beauvois

with Jérémie Renier, Marie-Julie Maille, Victor Belmondo

“Babardeală cu buclucsau porno balamuc” (Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn)

Romania/Luxemburg/Croatia/Czech Republic

by Radu Jude

with Katia Pascariu, Claudia Ieremia, Olimpia Mălai

“Fabian oder Der Gang vor die Hunde” (Fabian – Going to the Dogs)

Germany

by Dominik Graf

with Tom Schilling,...

New features from ‘Thunder Road’ director Jim Cummings and Denis Cote among line-up.

The Berlin International Film Festival has unveiled the features that will comprise its Encounters and Panorama strands, which will first be seen at the industry-focused, online-only event from March 1-5.

Panorama will include 19 titles, of which 16 are world premieres, while Encounters includes 12 features, all world premieres.

Like other strands that have been slimmed down for this year’s first virtual edition, Panorama is nearly half of the 36 titles that were selected last year. However, the Encounters competition, now in its second year, is just three titles fewer...

The Berlin Film Festival has revealed 12 titles from 16 countries that will compete in the festival’s Encounters strand, including Denis Côté’s “Social Hygiene” from Canada, Alice Diop’s “We” from France, and Fern Silva’s “Rock Bottom Riser” from the U.S.

The selections also take in “As I Want” (Egypt/France/Norway/Palestine) by Samaher Alqadi; “Azor” (Switzerland/France/Argentina) by Andreas Fontana; “The Beta Test” (U.S./U.K.) by Jim Cummings, Pj McCabe; and “Bloodsuckers (Germany) by Julian Radlmaier.

Also competing will be “The Girl and the Spider” (Switzerland) by Ramon Zürcher, Silvan Zürcher; “District Terminal” (Iran/Germany) by Bardia Yadegari, Ehsan Mirhosseini; “Moon, 66 Questions” (Greece/France) by Jacqueline Lentzou; “The Scary of Sixty-First” (U.S.) by Dasha Nekrasova; and “Taste” (Vietnam/Singapore/France/Thailand/Germany/Taiwan) by Lê Bảo.

The Encounters strand supports new or innovative voices in cinema. A jury will choose winners for best film,...

Day 3 of this year’s Berlinale announcements contain the line-ups for Encounters, Panorama and Perspektive Deutsches Kino. Check back in tomorrow for the Competition program.

Encounters was first introduced at last year’s festival to support new voices in cinema. A three-member jury will award Best Film, Best Director and a Special Jury Award during the industry event in March, with the prizes handed out physically at the summer event.

The selection consists of 12 titles from 16 countries, including seven debuts. Scroll down for the full list.

Over in Panorama, there are 19 titles including 14 world premieres. Several titles arrive from Sundance such as Prano Bailey-Bond’s UK feature Censor and Ronny Trocker’s Human Factors.

Perspektive Deutsches Kino will again present new views on German cinema, with six titles, all of which are world premieres. The full lists are below.

This week so far has seen the Generation, Retrospective, Forum, Forum Expanded and Shorts programs announced.

The board of a noble housing complex in Tehran is concerned about hate letters delivered to all tenants of the house. In a terrible tone and full of horrendous accusations, letters target Zoreh Moshiri (Roya Afshar), a woman in her 60’s who’s sharing a nice maisonette with her mother-in-law and her grown daughter Shiva (Neda Jebraeili). The board doesn’t really believe all the nonsense, but the otherwise very peaceful and respectful neighbourhood feels uncomfortable having that kind of gossip making rounds. According to those letters, not only she’s stealing in supermarkets, Zoreh is also hanging around the school with kids, she’s planning to poison her mother-in-law, and there are some wrong things happening in her home-operated beauty parlor.

Dominating the screen of Ali Derakhshandeh’s feature fiction debut “The Enemies”, Roya Afshar delivers a fantastic performance as Zoreh, a mysterious and quiet woman with more secrets than anyone could possibly imagine.