UPDATE (25 January 2024): The festival has added two Japanese medium-length films and one Jordan film to the Berlinale Special section.

-

The Berlinale has unveiled a slew of new titles set to be showcased in its Berlinale Special, Classics and Shorts sections during its 74th edition (15-25 February).

After an announcement was made detailing the initial batch of Gala and Berlinale Special presentations (see the news), the section will include 12 more titles. This year’s line-up is made of “genre films at their best and acclaimed masters”, enriched by “great performances and politically relevant documentaries”.

Heo Myeong-haeng’s The Roundup: Punishment (South Korea) and Rose Glass’s Love Lies Bleeding [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
ficha de la película] (USA/UK) both revolve around the concept of physical strength. The former is the fourth chapter in the successful Korean action series, where Don Lee and his mighty fists breathe life into detective Ma Seok-do, whilst the latter is “an electric love story where muscle and femininity go hand in hand”, toplined by Kristen Stewart.

Berlinale Special will also showcase two titles exploring the ideas of “performing and watching” – namely, the much-anticipated Netflix series Supersex [+lee también:
crítica
ficha de la serie] (an Italian production based on the life of porn star Rocco Siffredi, played by Alessandro Borghi) and Gakuryu Ishii’s The Box Man (Japan), “a surreal story based on the iconic book by Kobo Abe, in which a cardboard box becomes the perfect shell for men who want to withdraw from society, and gaze without being seen”.

Next, 2023 Golden Bear winner Nicolas Philibert will present his new effort Averroès & Rosa Parks [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
entrevista: Nicolas Philibert
ficha de la película] (France). With Shikun [+lee también:
crítica
ficha de la película] (Israel/France/Switzerland), Amos Gitai “will bring us into a building that is a metaphor for our chaotic society and the attempt to create the platform for a dialogue in the Middle East”. Meanwhile, in Turn in the Wound (UK/Germany/Italy/USA), Abel Ferrara visits Kyiv to explore what remains after two years of war in Ukraine, while abroad Patti Smith sings songs of peace. Moreover, In David Hinton’s Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger [+lee también:
crítica
ficha de la película] (UK), Martin Scorsese narrates an extensive tribute to the two filmmakers.

The Berlinale Special programme, whose final additions will be announced on 22 January, is provisionally rounded off by four documentaries. Agnes Lisa Wegner and Cece Mlay’s The Empty Grave [+lee también:
crítica
entrevista: Agnes Lisa Wegner y Cece M…
ficha de la película] (Germany/Tanzania) follows the quest of the Tanzanian descendants of those killed by German colonialists in 19th-century East Africa to retrieve the remains of their ancestors from Germany. Dimitris Athiridis’ exergue – on documenta 14 (Greece), at 840 minutes long – the second-longest film ever made – chronicles the epic journey of Adam Szymczyk as he works on the titular art exhibition. Finally, the strand will host the screenings of Berlinale Camera winner Edgar Reitz’s Subject: Filmmaking as well as Eleven Tomorrows: Berlinale Meets Football (Germany), a special project contributing to the cultural events linked to UEFA Euro 2024.

This year’s Shorts line-up is made up of 20 titles, wherein “delicate pencil drawings meet unconventional fictions, personal essays encounter hyper-realistic computer animations, and the personal reacts to the political”. Zooming in on the programme, section head Anna Henckel-Donnersmarck explained: “Sometimes, we need to see what artists imagine in order to be able to envision how we might approach our challenging reality. These examples – be they among friends, in art or on the cinema screen – can help us to re-align the compass for our own actions. Many of the films which were created last year – a year marked by wars, conflicts and hardening fronts on all sides – probably also devote themselves, as a result, to the questions: how do we want to approach, deal with and be there for one another? How do we forgive each other?”

Finally, the Berlinale Classics selection promises to offer ten restored titles “ranging from early sound-film experiment to a sober and distanced black-and-white drama, to colourful, artful exploitation”. Some of the European classics being presented in this strand are Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice (Sweden/France, 1986), Carlos Saura’s Deprisa, deprisa (Spain/France, 1981) and Ernst Lubitsch’s Kohlhiesel’s Daughters (Germany, 1920).

Here is the full list of titles:

Berlinale Special

Abiding Nowhere - Tsai Ming-liang (Taiwan/USA) (documentary)
August My Heaven - Riho Kudo (Japan) (medium-length film)
Averroès & Rosa Parks [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
entrevista: Nicolas Philibert
ficha de la película] - Nicholas Philibert (France)
The Roundup: Punishment - Heo Myeong-haeng (South Korea)
Chime - Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Japan) (medium-length film)
Cuckoo [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
ficha de la película] - Tilman Singer (Germany/USA)
Dostoevsky [+lee también:
crítica
entrevista: Fabio y Damiano D'Innocenzo
ficha de la serie] - Damiano D’Innocenzo, Fabio D’Innocenzo (Italy) (series)
Eleven Tomorrows: Berlinale Meets Football - Maximilian Bungarten, Anna-Maria Dutoit, Kilian Armando Friedrich, Indira Geisel, Eva Gemmer, Felix Herrmann, Hannah Jandl, Justina Jürgensen, Hilarija Ločmele, Daniela Magnani-Hüller, Sophie Mühe, Camille Tricaud, Marie Zrenner (Germany)
exergue – on documenta 14 - Dimitris Athiridis (Greece)
Subject: Filmmaking - Edgar Reitz (Germany)
The Box Man - Gakuryu Ishii (Japan)
The Empty Grave [+lee también:
crítica
entrevista: Agnes Lisa Wegner y Cece M…
ficha de la película] - Agnes Lisa Wegner, Cece Mlay (Germany/Tanzania)
Love Lies Bleeding [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
ficha de la película] – Rose Glass (USA/UK)
Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger [+lee también:
crítica
ficha de la película] - David Hinton (UK)
Shikun [+lee también:
crítica
ficha de la película] – Amos Gitai (Israel/France/Switzerland)
Supersex [+lee también:
crítica
ficha de la serie] - Matteo Rovere, Francesco Carrozzini, Francesca Mazzoleni (Italy) (series)
Sasquatch Sunset - David Zellner, Nathan Zellner (USA)
Seven Veils - Atom Egoyan (Canada)
Spaceman - Johan Renck (USA)
The Strangers’ Case - Brandt Andersen (Jordan)
Treasure [+lee también:
crítica
ficha de la película] - Julia von Heinz (Germany/France)
Turn in the Wound – Abel Ferrara (UK/Germany/Italy/USA)

Berlinale Shorts

Bye-Bye, Turtle - Selin (France)
Towards the Sun, Far From the Center - Luciana Merino, Pascal Viveros (Chile)
Lick a Wound - Nathan Ghali (France)
Circle - Joung Yumi (South Korea)
City of Poets - Sara Rajaei (Netherlands)
Goodbye First Love - Shuli Huang (USA)
Baldilocks - Marthe Peters (Belgium)
Kawauso - Akihito Izuhara (Japan)
The Moon Also Rises - Yuyan Wang (France)
An Odd Turn - Francisco Lezama (Argentina)
Wandering Bird - Victor Dupuis (Belgium)
Pacific Vein - Ulu Braun (Germany)
Preoperational Model - Philip Ullman (Netherlands)
Remains of the Hot Day - Wenqian Zhang (China)
Sojourn to Shangri-La - Lin Yihan (China)
City Museum / My Paradise - Boris Dewjatkin (Germany)
Tako Tsubo - Fanny Sorgo, Eva Pedroza (Austria)
That’s All From Me - Eva Könnemann (Germany)
Unwanted Kinship - Pavel Mozhar (Germany)
We Will Not Be the Last of Our Kind - Mili Pecherer (France)