Reporting from Berlin Film Festival, Stephen A Russell reveals a dozen favourite watches from the esteemed fest.
It’s been a winter wonderland of picture book snow at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, AKA Berlinale. But that didn’t stop this intrepid reviewer seeing as much as humanly possible. Here are my highlights probably coming to a cinema (or streamer) near you soon.
The Narrow Road to the Deep North
One of two screenings that left me in an ugly weeping mess at this year’s Berlinale wasn’t a film at all. Instead, it was a preview of the first two heart-wrenching episodes of The True History of the Kelly Gang director Justin Kurzel’s astounding adaptation of Richard Flannagan’s Booker Prize-winning novel.
Starring IT boy Jacob Elordi, it’s a no-holds-barred look at the horror young Australian soldiers endured as Japanese prisoners of war forced to carve the Thai-Burma railway out of punishing jungle terrain. With a stacked cast including Ciaran Hinds, Heather Mitchell and Odessa Young, this masterpiece will stream on Prime Video soon.
Lesbian Space Princess
The vibe couldn’t be any more different with the other Australian gem on this list. Adelaide filmmakers Leela Varghese and Emma Hough Hobbs’ wild-at-heart and potty-of-mouthed animated adventure goes star trekking across the universe in the queerest of ways.
Princess Saira (voiced by Shabana Azeez) sets out to save the bounty hunter babe, Kiki (Bernie Van Tiel) who just dumped her from the terror of the Straight White Maliens, voiced by the Aunty Donna crew. As crazy cute as it sounds, it picked up the Teddy Award for best queer feature.
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
Turns out the official Berlinale jury, led by queer hero Todd Haynes of Carol fame, was on a unity ticket with me regarding the best performance of the festival. They awarded the Silver Bear to Aussie actor Rose Byrne for her whirlwind of maternal fury electrifying American filmmaker Mary Bronstein’s Uncut Gems-level anxiety parade.
A warts and all look at a New York mum whose life’s caving in as dramatically as her bedroom ceiling, it’s even more potent for keeping it mostly all too real, apart from some trippy visuals that may or may not be delirium.
Peter Hujar’s Day
While we’re in New York, this even more intimate though much less chaotic portrait from Love is Strange director Ira Sachs casts Bond star Ben Whishaw as the real-life queer photographer of the title. Lost far too soon due to the ravages of the HIV/AIDS crisis, he was a gifted talent all too cruelly stolen.
Sachs borrows his words from a recently discovered transcript of an interview conducted by his good friend, non-fiction author Linda Rosenkrantz (an also-brill Rebecca Hall), and turns their heart-to-heart into a luminous invitation into the creative spirit.
Blue Moon
Completing the New York-set trilogy, Boyhood director Richard Linklater reunited once more with Ethan Hawke in this coulda been a contender biopic about Lorenz Hart, the man who should have been immortalised with Richard Rodgers but was supplanted in musical theatre history by Oscar Hammerstein II.
Hawke dons a dodgy hairpiece and forced camera perspectives to feign Lorenz Hart’s short stature, but his performance towers in this snappily written and performed love letter to a lost soul. Berlinale rightly crowned All of Us Strangers star Andrew Scott with the Silver Bear for support actor for his pained turn as Rodgers.
The Ugly Stepsister
You think you know the Cinderella fairy tale? Think again! Norwegian filmmaker Emilie Blichfeldt’s rottenly ornate debut feature transforms the story like a pumpkin coach at midnight.
Now a body beautiful myth-destroying body horror centred on Elvira, the stepsister who will sacrifice everything to marry the prince, it includes nose surgery via chisel, needles to the eyes and a terrible, terrible choice to fit the glass slipper. Coming soon to Shudder, it’s as if Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover ran away with The Substance.
The Ice Tower
Scoring the Silver Bear for outstanding ensemble, Earwig director Lucile Hadžihalilović’s magnetically ethereal film also deals in the language of fables as a young runaway from a French foster home (Clara Pacini, a revelation) breaks into what turns out to be a film studio for shelter.
La Vie En Rose lead Marion Cotillard plays a tempestuous movie star depicting Hans Christian Andersen’s Snow Queen in a magical film that plays with the boundaries of fiction and then brutally brings us back to earth.
The Thing With Feathers
Also working in the liminal space between the stories we tell ourselves and harsh realities, I adored Dylan Southern’s Benedict Cumberbatch-led tour de force about grief, which I reckon was unfairly maligned out of Sundance.
Yes, it’s a big performance, but as anyone who has lost a loved one knows, despair is no pretty business, especially if you have two young lads to look after (Richard and Henry Boxall are brilliant). What’s not to love about David Thewlis voicing a possibly murderous anthropomorphic crow that’s straight out of The Babadook?
Deaf (Sorda)
Spanish filmmaker Eva Libertad’s stunning ode to motherhood (a big theme this year) is the other film that left me blowing snotty tear bubbles into my hoodie sleeve this Berlinale. Hung on a stunning performance by deaf actor Miriam Garlo, she plays a potter who is head over heels in love with her gorgeous partner Hector (Álvaro Cervantes).
But when their daughter is born, their difference in ability drives a wedge between them as the deaf and hearing worlds diverge dramatically. It’s achingly beautiful.
Dreams in Nightmares
Careening around several US states as well as straddling the Mexican border, Test Pattern director Shatara Michelle Ford’s glorious road trip movie about the beauty of Black and trans women feels especially vital given the political death throes of that nation playing out alarmingly for all to see.
It’s big and bright and full of might as three very different, but nevertheless bonded mates go in search of a missing fourth wheel. It’s a real tonic in dark times.
Night Stage
The year got off to a racy start with our Nicole Kidman chugging Harris Dickinson’s milk. Still, that steaminess pales in comparison to this queer noir dance political thriller from Brazilian filmmakers Marcio Reolon and Filipe Matzembacher (Hard Paint).
It traces the path of carnage between a theatrical dancer with ambitions of becoming a TV star (Gabriel Faryas, sure to be huge) and an aspiring and very closeted politician (Cirillo Luna). What could go wrong is very much about the uncontrolled horn in this hot mess (in the good way) movie.
Mickey 17
Last but certainly not least, while the latest English-language movie from Parasite director Bong Joon-ho doesn’t quite live up to that masterpiece in social climbing satire, it is a bonkers fun space romp starring Robert Pattinson not once, but twice as battling clones in an off-world dystopia with a dry sense of humour.
Featuring a stacked cast including Toni Collette, Steven Yeun, Naomi Ackie and Mark Ruffalo as a cultish buffoon of a nasally droning, perma-tanned politician who is entirely like you-know-who and gets what he deserves, it’s a hoot— and in cinemas soon.
