300 by Zack Snyder (top); Nina Hoss in Yella (middle); In Memory of Myself by Saverio Costanzo (bottom)
Berlin Film Festival 2007: Part I
A few other titles that sound intriguing:
- Inspired by Frank Miller's drawings and directed by Zack Snyder, 300 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' 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. 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 Counterfeiters, 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.