Berlin Film Festival 2007 Film Line-Up
by Andre Soares
The 57th Berlin Film Festival’s competition line-up (which, as usual, strangely includes a handful of films that are not in competition) represents most continents, though English-language productions dominate the list of 26 motion pictures. Among these are 19 world premieres, six international premieres, and one European premiere. Twenty-two of the shortlisted films are competing for the Golden Bear.
Among the English-language fare, most of it hails from the United States and the United Kingdom, plus a number of American or British co-productions with other nations).
Robert DeNiro’s The Good Shepherd and Steven Soderbergh’s The Good German were announced earlier in January. Both films have big names attached to them (George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon), and The Good German has a German setting. That may explain their inclusion in the line-up, since neither film was very well received upon their release in the United States.
Clint Eastwood’s World War II drama Letters from Iwo Jima (above), a major hit among U.S. critics, will be shown out of competition, along with Richard Eyre’s British drama Notes on a Scandal (left), starring a superb Judi Dench as a lonely lesbian preying on adulterous teacher Cate Blanchett, who has been having an affair with a horny fifteen-year-old (Andrew Simpson, excellent as the melodrama’s Lolito).
Based on real-life events, Gregory Nava’s Bordertown stars Jennifer Lopez and Antonio Banderas in a tale of murder and intrigue at the U.S.-Mexico border, while Sam Garbarski’s Irina Palm has Marianne Faithful playing a widow who accidentally discovers a new career for herself as a sex club worker.
Bille August’s Goodbye Bafana, set in Apartheid-era South Africa and starring Joseph Fiennes, runs the risk of being one of those English-language international productions that fall way short of expectations, whereas François Ozon’s Angel (right), starring Romola Garai, Sam Neill, and Ozon’s muse, Charlotte Rampling, sounds as intriguing as the director’s French-language fare. Set in early 20th-century England, Angel follows the rise and fall of a woman who becomes the British elite’s literary flavor of the moment.
Since Ozon has gone the English way, it’s up to veterans Jacques Rivette, who’ll turn 79 on March 1, and André Téchiné to keep la langue française up there on the Berlinale’s International Competition screens.
Rivette is represented by Ne touchez pas la hache / Don’t Touch the Axe, an adaptation of Honoré de Balzac’s love story La Duchesse de Langeais, with Guillaume Depardieu, Jeanne Balibar, and veterans Michel Piccoli and Bulle Ogier; while Téchiné offers Les témoins / The Witnesses, a drama about the AIDS explosion in the 1980s, starring Emmanuelle Béart, Michel Blanc, Sami Bouajila, and Julie Depardieu.
Also, Olivier Dahan’s La Môme / La Vie en rose, the festival’s opening-night film, has Marion Cotillard playing singing legend Edith Piaf.
A few other titles that sound intriguing:
- Inspired by Frank Miller’s drawings and directed by Zack Snyder, 300 (above) depicts the battle of Thermopylae in the year 480 B.C.E. At that decisive battle, King Leonidas of Sparta and a mere 300 followers confronted invader King Xerxes’s brush-stomping Persian army. If the film looks even half as good as the stills, it’ll win every cinematography and production design award for 2007. But I wonder if 300 will display anything resembling intelligent storytelling, or if it’ll simply be a series of extended battle sequences glorifying bravery, honor, sadism, and all those great qualities that make wars so totally cool and irresistible. The cast includes Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, and Rodrigo Santoro.
- The Israeli entry, Joseph Cedar’s Beaufort, follows the men of the last Israeli battalion to leave southern Lebanon. In the cast, Alon Abutbul, Eli Eltonyo, and Ohad Knoller.
Set in the early 1970s, Cao Hamburger’s O Ano em Que Meus Pais Saíram de Férias | The Year My Parents Went on Vacation, is a Brazilian-Argentinean co-production in which a Brazilian boy is left with a relative in São Paulo’s Jewish quarter after his parents "go on vacation" during Brazil’s bloody military dictatorship. The principals are played by Michel Joelsas, Paulo Autran, Germano Haiut, and Daniela Piepczyk. O Ano em Que Meus Pais Saíram de Férias won the audience award at the 2006 Rio de Janeiro Film Festival.
Stefan Ruzowitzky’s Austrian-German Die Fälscher / The Counterfeiter, one of only two German-language productions in this year’s competition line-up, portrays what the Berlinale’s press release describes as "the biggest counterfeiting operation ever pulled off." Set near the end of World War II, Die Fälscher shows how the Nazis forged millions of British pounds at a counterfeiting plant that relied on the labor of prisoners from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Karl Markovics, August Diehl, Devid Striesow, and Marie Bäumer star.- Christian Petzold’s Yella, the other German-language film in competition, follows a woman who leaves the eastern province of Brandenburg to begin a new life in western Germany — and thus escape from a wretched marriage. The problem is that the past won’t leave her alone. Nina Hoss, Hinnerk Schönemann, and Devid Striesow star.
Park Chan-wook’s Saibogujiman kwenchana | I’m a Cyborg, But That’s Ok tells the story of a young psychiatric patient who thinks she’s a cyborg in love. Great title, at least in English. (I’m not sure if that’s a literal translation.) The cast includes Korean pop superstar Rain and Lim Soo-jung.- In Saverio Costanzo’s In memoria di me / In Memory of Myself, a young priest-in-the-making (Christo Jivkov) is overcome by some mighty serious doubts before his ordination. Also in the cast, Filippo Timi and André Hennicke.
The Berlin Film Festival runs between Feb. 8-18. The list of Berlin festival winners will be posted here.
300 | 300 | 300 by Zack Snyder, U.S. (World Premiere, Out of Competition)
Angel | Angel | Angel by François Ozon, France/Belgium/U.K. (World Premiere)/Closing Film
Beaufort | Beaufort by Joseph Cedar, Israel (World Premiere)
Bordertown | Bordertown by Gregory Nava, U.S. (World Premiere)
Desert Dream / Hyazgar by Zhang Lu, Republic of Korea/France (World Premiere)
Die Fälscher | The Counterfeiter | Die Fälscher by Stefan Ruzowitzky, Germany/Austria (World Premiere)
El Otro | The Other | Der Andere by Ariel Rotter, Argentina/France/Germany (World Premiere)
Goodbye Bafana | Goodbye Bafana by Bille August, Germany/France/Belgium/U.K./Italy (World Premiere)
Hallam Foe | Hallam Foe | Hallam Foe by David Mackenzie, U.K. (World Premiere)
In memoria di me / In Memory of Myself by Saverio Costanzo, Italy (World Premiere)
Irina Palm | Irina Palm | Irina Palm by Sam Garbarski Belgium/Germany/Luxembourg/U.K./France (World Premiere)
La Môme | La Vie en rose by Olivier Dahan, France/U.K./Czech Republic (World Premiere)/Opening Film
Les témoins | The Witnesses | Die Zeugen by André Téchiné, France (World Premiere)
Letters from Iwo Jima | Letters from Iwo Jima by Clint Eastwood, U.S. (European Premiere, Out of Competition)
Ne touchez pas la hache | Don’t Touch the Axe by Jacques Rivette, France/Italy (World Premiere)
Notes on a Scandal | Notes on a Scandal | Tagebuch eines Skandals by Richard Eyre, U.K. (International Premiere, Out of Competition)
O Ano em Que Meus Pais Saíram de Férias | The Year My Parents Went on Vacation | Das Jahr als meine Eltern im Urlaub waren by Cao Hamburger, Brazil / Argentina (International Premiere)
Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále | I Served the King of England | Ich habe den englischen König bedient by Jiri Menzel, Czech Republic / Slovakia (International Premiere)
Ping guo | Lost in Beijing | Lost in Beijing by Li Yu, China (World Premiere)
Saibogujiman kwenchana | I’m a Cyborg, But That’s Ok by Park Chan-wook, Republic of Korea (International Premiere)
The Good German | The Good German | The Good German by Steven Soderbergh, U.S. (International Premiere)
The Good Shepherd | The Good Shepherd | Der Gute Hirte by Robert DeNiro, U.S. (International Premiere)
The Walker | The Walker by Paul Schrader, U.S./U.K. (World Premiere, Out of Competition)
Tu ya de hun shi | Tuya’s Marriage | Tuyas Ehe by Wang Quan’an, China (World Premiere)
When a Man Falls in the Forest by Ryan Eslinger, Canada/U.S. (World Premiere)
Yella | Yella | Yella by Christian Petzold, Germany (World Premiere)
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