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BERLINALE 2025 Forum

Il Forum della Berlinale annuncia una selezione di cinema contemporaneo che interroga il nostro tempo

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- Tra i titoli selezionati quest'anno, le nuove opere di Vitaly Mansky, dei fratelli Gianluca e Massimiliano De Serio, di Želimir Žilnik, di Adilkhan Yerzhanov e di James Benning

Il Forum della Berlinale annuncia una selezione di cinema contemporaneo che interroga il nostro tempo
Time to the Target di Vitaly Mansky

Questo articolo è disponibile in inglese.

UPDATE (28 January 2025): The Forum section is completed by Gerd Kroske's documentary Pride & Attitude, which poses the question “What was once gained – what is lost?” through the biographies of former GDR female industrial workers.

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Today, the 75th Berlinale (13-23 February) unveiled the full programme for its Forum section. “The 55th Forum main programme comprises 30 films from five continents – including seven feature debuts – and encounters a world and its people that are in a poor state. Sounding out a diverse range of cinematic forms, the Forum shows contemporary cinema that moves beyond the cult and the commercial – giving off sparks of humanity, interrogating the status quo and functioning as a seismograph of our time,” comments section head Barbara Wurm.

As usual, a wealth of European entries comprises this year’s line-up, such as the new title by seasoned Latvian documentary filmmaker Vitaly Mansky (Putin’s Witnesses [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Vitaly Mansky
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]
), Time to the Target, a sober look at a soldiers’ graveyard in L’viv, which stands alongside the second film in the programme about Ukraine in wartime, a tender portrait of Odesa, titled When Lightning Flashes Over the Sea, by Eva Neymann (Song of Songs [+leggi anche:
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).

Next up is Stefan Hayn’s 2024 (2023), which places the political Berlin and the private Bavaria within the two respective frames Hayn makes for himself as a painter of his surroundings: that of the film shot and that of the painting shown in it.

Meanwhile, the “different facets of the political are revealed across a broad geographical spectrum”, including the “moving, four-hour Berlin institutional study” Palliative Care Unit by Philipp Döring; “the miraculous journey into the underground world of regional Italian singing cultures” offered by Canone effimero, a documentary by brothers Gianluca and Massimiliano De Serio (Una promessa [+leggi anche:
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trailer
intervista: Gianluca e Massimiliano De…
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]
); and the portrait of a relationship between a Gambian man and an Austrian woman depicted in Ivette Löcker’s Our Time Will Come.

“Reflecting on today by looking at the past marks a key quality of the documentary forms showing at the Forum,” states the Berlinale’s official press release. In this respect, the Peruvian-Portuguese found-footage film The Memory of Butterflies by Tatiana Fuentes Sadowski is a reconstruction of indigenous slavery and colonial crimes, and questions the director’s own family connections.

Moreover, the line-up will showcase Sirens Call [+leggi anche:
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, a debut feature helmed by Lina Sieckmann and Miri Ian Gossing billed as “an artistically daring hybrid film” and “an intimate look at the work of real-life mermaids”. Further European feature debuts include Minimals in a Titanic World by Rwanda’s Philbert Aimé Mbabazi Sharangabo, Veronica Nicole Tetelbaum’s Houses [+leggi anche:
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]
, and “the music-charged debut films” by Marie Luise Lehner and Yuri Semashko, titled If You Are Afraid You Put Your Heart into Your Mouth and Smile and The Swan Song of Fedor Ozerov, respectively.

Finally, the programme promises “a hint of optimism to be found across the whole spectrum of features, even if the individual fates they narrate are hardly easy”. These titles include Jan Eilhardt’s semi-autobiographical pic Janine Moves to the Country, Juan Daniel Fernández Molero’s hybrid film Punku, Elmar Imanov’s “tale of grief, loneliness, intimacy and new starts” The Kiss of the Grasshopper, and Eighty Plus, courtesy of veteran filmmaker and former Golden Bear winner Želimir Žilnik. Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s “violent Kazakh genre horror plucked from real life” Cadet and a new experimental effort from US filmmaker James Benning, little boy, are also in the section’s programme.

Here is the full list of the selected titles:

Forum

little boy – James Benning (USA)
Queer as Punk –
Yihwen Chen (Malaysia/Indonesia)
Canone effimero –
Gianluca De Serio, Massimiliano De Serio (Italy)
Palliative Care Unit –
Philipp Döring (Germany)
Janine Moves to the Country –
Jan Eilhardt (Germany)
Punku –
Juan Daniel Fernández Molero (Peru/Spain)
The Memory of Butterflies –
Tatiana Fuentes Sadowski (Peru/Portugal)
Sirens Call [+leggi anche:
trailer
scheda film
]
Miri Ian Gossing, Lina Sieckmann (Germany/Netherlands)
After Dreaming –
Christine Haroutounian (USA/Armenia/Mexico)
2024 (2023)
Stefan Hayn (Germany)
Tiger's PondNatesh Hegde (India/Singapore)
The Trio HallSu Hui-yu (Taiwan)
The Kiss of the GrasshopperElmar Imanov (Germany/Luxembourg/Italy)
Holding LiatBrandon Kramer (USA)
Pride & AttitudeGerd Kroske (Germany)
If You Are Afraid You Put Your Heart into Your Mouth and SmileMarie Luise Lehner (Austria)
Our Time Will ComeIvette Löcker (Austria)
Time to the TargetVitaly Mansky (Latvia/Czechia/Ukraine)
Minimals in a Titanic WorldPhilbert Aimé Mbabazi Sharangabo (Rwanda/Germany/Cameroon)
Spring NightKang Mi-ja (South Korea)
The Sense of ViolenceKim Mooyoung (South Korea)
When Lightning Flashes Over the SeaEva Neymann (Germany/Ukraine)
UndergroundKaori Oda (Japan)
EvidenceLee Anne Schmitt (USA)
The Swan Song of Fedor OzerovYuri Semashko (Lithuania)
FwendsSophie Somerville (Australia)
ColossalNayibe Tavares-Abel (Dominican Republic)
Houses [+leggi anche:
trailer
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]
Veronica Nicole Tetelbaum (Israel/Germany)
CadetAdilkhan Yerzhanov (Kazakhstan)
What's Next?Cao Yiwen (Hong Kong/China)
Eighty PlusŽelimir Žilnik (Serbia/Slovenia)

(Tradotto dall'inglese)

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