Berlinale 2023 roundup

This was only the second film festival I have attended in person as a critic, and it was a pretty good one. I watched 37 movies and wrote reviews of 34 of those (the other three were not new, and while I will probably write a piece about the impact of the work of Sandra Bonnaire someday, today is not that day). But since the entire point of this blog is so I can have my own record of my own work, here are my overall thoughts.

It was a solid festival, much more curious about bringing a global perspective to cinema than I am used to seeing. I think my favourite film of the festival, though it was not the best, was Green Night, but I like seeing movies where women outsmart bad men. I say that, of course, like Past Lives isn’t one of the best movies I think I’ve ever seen. Midwives has also stuck with me; it’s a movie about the human body but also about work, and gets it all right. Limbo had a brain-exploding setting, a lead actor going very hard against type, and the gift that is Rob Collins (I love him).

All the Colours of the World Are Between Black and White gets its own paragraph, both because of its stylistic brilliance, and also because my review at that link remains the only English-language one on Rotten Tomatoes. Those are my top five.

Otherwise there were a fair few coming-of-middle-age movies: Cidade Rabat from Portugal, Matria from Spain (I loved the heroine’s lousy attitude), The Last Night of Amore from Italy (I loved the central marriage in this crime thriller, as well as the dynamite opening shot), The Shadowless Tower from China (the drunken restaurant scene has stuck with me), and to stretch the metaphor slightly, Inside. The coming-of-age movies included the smoking hot German Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything, my first Chechen film, The Cage is Looking for a Bird (depressing, emotive, good), the raucous Mexican Tótem, Suzume (my review of which failed to capture its beauty), Sweet As (a cute Australian movie, of which mine is again the only RT review) and again in metaphor stretching, Disco Boy (Franz Rogowski can do anything).

Till the End of the Night won a major acting award, but in my option it was won by the wrong actor (not least because the winner did have an acting coach thanked deep in the credits). 20,000 Species of Bees won the other acting award, which was more deserved, not least since the winning actor was eight. The influence of a couple people on the jury is highly visible there, I think. The Plough won best director and I’ve been thinking about its ideas about art and family much more than I was expecting. She Came to Me wasn’t bad but in comparison to the rest it was surprisingly forgettable.

Absence was one of the weaker films thanks to its blown ending, but it reminded me a lot of The Salt in Our Waters which you probably haven’t seen and you should. The Burdened was my first Yemeni film (and the first one in the history of the Berlinale) and well worth seeing. The Adults maybe not so much; this kind of quirky Americana can grate badly, as it does here. The winner for Best Screenplay, Music, I still have no idea if it was good or not. Manodrome was an incoherent mess, which is probably what it needed to be, but still. Afire was okay but the plot irritates. BlackBerry was also okay, but as someone who is fond of watching Glenn Howerton lose his temper I would at minimum say that. The Survival of Kindness was very upsetting but also revolutionary in its lack of language.

In documentary corner the big win for On the Adamant caught everyone by surprise, but its kindness made the choice obvious. Under the Sky of Damascus (my first Syrian film) was incredibly depressing. Nuclear Nomads was not as strong but that’s mostly because of what it didn’t say. Hummingbirds was a raucous treat but needed more shape. The Klezmer Project was deeply weird and not in a bad way, but not good enough to be good, if that makes sense.

Finally, there was Seneca – On the Creation of Earthquakes. I am now a fervent admirer of Andrew Koji. More importantly, unless a miracle occurs it will be Julian Sands’ final film. It is a deeply weird and hilariously violent exploration of life on the cusp of death. Fitting, isn’t it.