Lights, Camera, Action (Plan): A Focus on the Filmmakers of Tomorrow at Berlinale
The 74th annual Berlin International Film Festival just drew to a close. Per tradition, the entertainment law firm Morrison & Foerster and the Motion Picture Association gathered some of the festival’s notable attendees for a topical annual panel discussion. This year, co-hosts Christiane Stuetzle, a partner at Morrison & Foerster, and Sabine Henssler, Vice President ...
Hope for a New Era of Sustainable Filmmaking at Film Goes Green at the Berlinale
On Friday during the run of the 70th Berlin International Film Festival, a diverse audience gathered at the law offices of Morrison Foerster for a panel on green filmmaking, hosted by the entertainment firm and the Motion Picture Association. “Our studios recognize that sustainability is business, and business is sustainability,” remarked MPA chairman and CEO ...
Berlinale 2018: Female Directors Loom Large at This Year’s Festival
The 68th Berlinale wrapped up on Sunday, and the talk throughout the festival centered on a single point: festival director Dieter Kosslick’s contract, which is up next year. He has steered the ship, and well, for the past 16 years, but many now believe the time has come for a fresh perspective. The festival, some ...
Berlinale 2018: All the American Entries to the Competition
The 68th Berlinale is halfway over, and thus far, the international entrants to the competition section have been a mixed bag. Alexey German Jr.’s Dovlatov presents 1971 Leningrad in a lovely cream-toned filter and somehow makes Soviet literary luminaries Joseph Brodsky and Sergei Dovlatov seem shallow, for a half-hour too long. Audiences aren’t really buying ...
Berlinale 2018: Storyboard Artist Jay Clarke on Drawing Wes Anderson’s Canine Showstopper Isle of Dogs
On Sunday evening an audience of a couple hundred people, almost all of whom appeared to be under thirty, filed into an auditorium at Berlin’s Hebbel am Ufer. It was the third day of the Berlinale, but the crowd wasn’t here for a premiere or a Sundance leftover (the big complaint at this year’s festival), ...
Berlinale 2016: A Recap
With Meryl Streep presiding over the festival’s international jury, the 66th Berlinale handed out awards yesterday and drew to a close. The Golden Bear went to Fuocoammare, or Fire at Sea, a tragic and topical Italian-French co-production from the director Gianfranco Rosi. Taking place on the Sicilian island Lampedusa, the documentary thoughtfully and powerfully examines ...
Berlinale 2016: Director Gina Abatemarco on her Beautiful, Haunting Doc Kivalina
In the early 1900’s, the U.S. government opened schools for Inuit communities across the Alaskan Arctic. Hardly a noble act, the schools were a vehicle for forcing the settlement of tribes who had been living traditional nomadic lifestyles up until the Bureau of Indian Affairs demanded they enroll their children in those schools, thereby drastically ...
Berlinale 2016: Jude Law Works the Good and Bad in Genius
Opening yesterday at the 66th Berlinale was Genius, a reflective tale of extreme talent and the monstrosity that can be wrought by it, based on the short creative life of early 20th century writer Thomas Wolfe (Jude Law). The movie is the directorial debut of British theater director Michael Grandage, who does an admirable job ...
Midnight Special Tests Information-Free Waters at the Berlinale
Science fiction, thriller, or family drama? Jeff Nichols’ latest film, Midnight Special, which opens this week after premiering at the Berlinale, absorbingly mixes all three genres. Lead actor and perpetual Nichols collaborator Michael Shannon is a valiant dad on the run, trying to save his eight-year-old son, Alton (Jaeden Lieberher), from both a religious cult ...
