The third day of the festival is full of great events for you – today alone eight of our TEDDY films have their premiere!
A list of all screenings and reruns can be found below.
There will also be a panel discussion today on Curating the Future: towards programming equity. If you want to participate, you can find out more here.
PREMIERES:
Directed by: Anthony Lapia
France, 2023, 69′
Paris at night. The driving bass of a sound system thunders through an underground car park. On the dance floor of a club, the revellers allow themselves be propelled by techno, enveloped in smoke and light, communicating only with their bodies. Félicie is approached by her ex-girlfriend, but she turns away. In the next room, the music is quieter. People get talking, consume drugs or take a break before throwing themselves into the dancing once more. This is where Félicie meets Saïd who has just come from his shift as a driver and tells her about the “gilets jaunes” protests. Félicie suggests that they move on to party at her place while the other revellers continue to abandon themselves to the night. In clear-eyed close-ups that float amidst an ever-developing soundscape, director Anthony Lapia captures the anatomy and energy of aparty just as well as the gradual transition to the quieter world of the afterparty. On the cusp between night and day, different lives and views collide before, more or less gently but inexorably, everyday life returns.
SCREENING TIMES:
18.02. / 22:00 Zoo Palast 2
Directed by: Juan Sebastian Torales
France, Argentina, Italy, 2023, 94′
TEDDY nominated
“He’s not the first boy who’s missing in the forest. The boy that was with him says that a monster has taken him.”
Santiago del Estero, northern Argentina. When Nino is deemed a bad influence to the other boys in his neighbourhood and has toendure homophobic attacks on the streets, his parents temporarily move the family to the countryside. Away from the city, Nino wandersin a forest supposedly haunted by the Almamula, a monster that takes those who commit carnal sins and impure acts. It’s summer: thebodies sweat, the line between dream and reality becomes blurry. A boy disappears. In a world surrounded by whispers, unspokendesires and prayers, Nino’s curiosity and impulses surface. As an escape from a reality flooded with toxicity, repressions, interdictionsand imminent violence, the hidden and sensuous mysteries of the forest become increasingly attractive to Nino.
SCREENING TIMES:
18.02. / 17:00 Urania
Learn more about the film in our interview with Juan Sebastian Torales.
Directed by: Pablo Solarz
Argentina, Uruguay, 2022, 75′
“We’ll grow up, we’ll make mistakes, and learn from them, we’ll suffer, we’ll laugh out loud, we’ll age, we’ll get sick, we’ll die. In themeantime, dear Felipe Zavala, we must live.”
Felipe has a dream – he is on stage and passionately performing while his mother, grandmother and his deceased father are part of the audience and watch him enthusiastically. After waking up, reality catches up with him again. He’s part of a theatre group with his friends, at night he writes his own plays, but he keeps from his mother that he is taking acting lessons. Because in her reality there is no place for such dreams, and Mara is not fond of talk about theatre. When Felipe is invited to an audition and is confronted with family secrets and deceptions, the lines between dream and reality, truth and lies, dramas and real life become increasing blurred.
SCREENING TIMES:
18.02. / 11:00 Urania
Directed by: Hannes Hirsch
Germany, 2023, 79′
TEDDY nominated
Moritz arrives in Berlin with no particular plans. He might study art history, but there is no rush, he is only 22. He has moved here to be with his boyfriend Jonas, an attractive photographer who is a little more accustomed to the easy-going, noncommittal ways of the city. But then their relationship suddenly comes to an end. Devastated and alone, Moritz becomes a seeker. His first foray takes him to a gym. Little by little his fashion, his friends and his drugs start to change. His life becomes more and more nocturnal, and he begins to liveout his repressed desires. With a documentary-like sensibility, Hannes Hirsch’s feature-length debut sensitively depicts a new start in Berlin’s gay scene. Bodyimages and notions of masculinity are constantly being negotiated, sexual constellations and identities are changing, and insecurities are sedated with the intoxicating rush of the next encounter. But Moritz’s vulnerability is always discernible. In this way, Drifter looks beneath the seductive surface of a night culture that knows no bounds and its short-lived games, revealing the actual people rather than celebrating the cliché.
SCREENING TIMES:
18.02. / 18:30 Cubix 9
Learn more about the film in our interview with Hannes Hirsch.
Directed by: Sam H. Freeman, Ng Choon Ping
United Kingdom, 2023, 99′
TEDDY nominated
With his performances as Aphrodite Banks, Jules has a place among London’s celebrated drag artists. One night after a show, he steps out to get some cigarettes and is brutally attacked by a guy out with a gang of blokes. Although Jules is able to recover physically, he withdraws from the outside world, traumatised. Months later, he recognises his attacker by chance in a gay sauna. Without make-up and wrapped only in a towel, Jules is able to approach the other man incognito and find out who he is. He begins an affair with the closeted homosexual Preston in order to take his revenge. Directors Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping deploy a direct style and tightly woven scenes to depict a London of stark contrasts interms of gender ideology. Carried by their cast’s physically and psychologically subtle performances, their revenge drama is gripping, but more importantly it is also the study of a milieu that avoids social determinism. A compelling psychological portrait of internalised homophobia and a powerful and brave pro-LGBTIQ+ kick against a society that, at its core, is totalitarian, anti-gay and anti-trans.
SCREENING TIMES:
18.02. / 19:15 CinemaxX 10
Learn more about the film in our interview with Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping
Directed by: Han Shuai
Hong Kong, China, 2023, 92′
TEDDY nominated
They meet at the airport in Seoul and could not be more different: Chinese immigrant Jin Xia works at the security checkpoint, dresses practically, and does her duty. The green-haired woman who shows up that day is younger, more extroverted and unimpressed by the pat-down. Xia is fascinated. When the young woman involves her in her crooked dealings shortly afterwards, it becomes clear that the two have more in common than meets the eye. On the lookout for the big hit that could free them from all their dependencies, they venture into South Korea’s underworld where they hold their own against the men who seek to dominate, possess and use them. In her second feature-length film, Han Shuai brings together two disparate lone female fighters who have learned to rely on no one but themselves. As they enter into a reluctant dance of getting-to-know each other – sometimes attracting, at other times repelling, sometimes drawing closer, at other times turning away – their plan recedes into the background. The cocoon that is spun around the twoof them and binds them together as they race through the city at night on their mopeds seems fragile, but inevitable.
SCREENING TIMES:
18.02. / 20:30 Cubix 2
Learn more about the film in our interview with Han Shuai.
Directed by: John Trengove
United Kingdom, USA, 2023, 95′
TEDDY nominated
Ralphie is young and healthy and his girlfriend is pregnant. Yet things do not feel quite right. His job as an Uber driver is neither gratifying nor financially secure. His relationship with his body may also be built on shaky foundations. When he is inducted into a libertarian masculinity cult, the tensions that have been growing inside him surface. Ralphie begins to lose his grip on reality. In his previous film, The Wound, South African filmmaker John Trengove explored how a male rite of passage unleashed repressed feelings with the same potential for danger as opening a pressure cooker. A similar force is at work inside the protagonist of Manodrome, in whom Trengove observes a disturbing phenomenon from an original angle. Ralphie is not the stereotype that springs to mind when thinking of groups formed around fervent misogyny such as the infamous “incels”, and his character helps us to deepen our understanding of what male fragility can entail. In spite of the dark implications of its premise, this film is not devoid of humour. However, the skilful way in which the tension builds and powerful performances from Jesse Eisenberg and Adrien Brody leave the viewer truly shaken.
SCREENING TIMES:
18.02. / 20:30 Cubix 2
Maynila: Sa mga kuko ng liwanag
Directed by: Lino Brocka
Philippines, 1975, 126′
Fisherman Julio leaves his idyllic island province to search for his girlfriend Ligaya in Manila, where she allegedly has a job. He signs up at a construction site, where the workers are ruthlessly exploited. One day at the market, he spots the woman who lured Ligaya to the big city. She takes him to the house of a Chinese man, where Julio thinks he recognises his girlfriend at a window. When he loses both his job and his apartment, he ends up with a street hustler, who indoctrinates him into the world of prostitution. It becomes increasingly clear that Ligaya is also working as a prostitute, albeit not voluntarily … This social drama depicts the ordeals of two young people as representatives of the urban underclass during the Marcos regime, whereby the real location is freighted with symbolic meaning. Oppression and state corruption in Manila in the Claws of Light are countered by gestures of solidarity among the poorest of the poor. But neither religious solace nor the Marxist revolution will provide salvation for the two lovers, seen finally in a cinema, hugging as the passion of the Christ in Nicholas Ray’s King of Kings (1961) unfolds.
SCREENING TIMES:
18.02. / 16:00 Cubix 3
Directed by: Milad Alami
Sweden, 2023, 119′
TEDDY nominated
Iman lives with his wife Maryam and his two daughters in Sweden in an ever-changing succession of refugee hostels. Having fled his former Iranian homeland for fear of persecution, he is looking for ways to secure residence for them, and is earning extra money delivering pizzas on a snowmobile. When Maryam unexpectedly falls pregnant with a third child, and conversations with the authorities become more difficult, Iman decides to resume his career as a wrestler. Although he has promised Maryam to put the whole thing behind him, he is hoping that this will help him obtain a special residence permit as a sportsman. His skills quickly return and are appreciated in the Swedish team, but his life away from his family is not without consequences. Communication breaks down between him and his wife, who sees no reason to stay in Sweden any longer, and he is confronted with the deeper reasons for his flight. Iranian director Milad Alami’s second feature depicts an emotional as well as physical confrontation with the unspoken. With an engaging cast led by Payman Maadi, this meticulously rendered drama reveals how complex social dynamics can affect an individual’s inner self.
SCREENING TIMES:
18.02. / 19:00 Haus der Berliner Festspiele
Learn more about the film in our interview with Milad Alami.
Directed by: Vuk Lungulov-Klotz
USA, 2023, 87′
TEDDY nominated
“I’m fine with it.” – “Yeah, well, I am not.”
After transitioning, it seemed easier for Feña to simply cut all ties with his past. Dealing with the changes was painful enough, let alonehis family’s reaction. But when Feña runs into an ex-boyfriend, receives an unexpected visit from his little sister and finds his Chileanfather trying to reconnect with him, their lives are suddenly once again intertwined. Compassionate, intimate and frank, Vuk Lungulov-Klotz’s debut feature film explores the complex challenge of being trans and trying to reconcile the past with the present.
SCREENING TIMES:
18.02. / 18:00 Cubix 8
Learn more about the film in our interview with Vuk Lungulov-Klotz.
Directed by: Vlad Petri
Romania, Croatia, Qatar, Iran, 2023, 68′
TEDDY nominated
In the 1970s, an Iranian student named Zahra meets a fellow student called Maria at university in Bucharest. They are both pursuing a degree in medicine and develop a deep friendship and admiration for each other. When the revolution against the Shah breaks out in 1979, Zahra goes back to Iran, moved by the hope of political transformation, although disappointments are quick to follow. Zahra never ends up returning to Romania. Over the next decades, Zahra and Maria exchange letters about protests, the general upheaval in both countries, the oppression of women and how it affects them; Romania is not to remain untouched by revolution either. Separated by the revolutions, their correspondence depicts two women struggling to conform to societal stereotypes and grappling with their profound feelings for each other, which seem to stretch beyond simple friendship. In his film, Vlad Petri draws entirely on incredible, stunningly edited archival footage from Iran and Romania to tell the story of these two women in such a way that the lines between documentary and fiction blur. In such testing times, doesn’t such a bond almost seem too good to be true?
SCREENING TIMES:
18.02. / 9:30 Cubix 1
Learn more about the film in our interview with Vlad Petri.
RERUNS:
All the Colours of the World Are Between Black and White
18.02. / 19:00 Cubix 5
Arturo a los 30 (About Thirty)
18.02. / 16:00 Cubix 7
La Bête dans la jungle (The Beast in the Jungle)
18.02. / 12:00 Haus der Berliner Festspiele
Joan Baez I Am A Noise
18.02. / 15:30 Cubix 9
Kill Boksoon
18.02. / 21:00 Verti Music Hall
Mammalia
18.02. / 21:00 Delphi Filmpalast
Manodrome
18.02. / 19:15 Berlinale Palast
Notre corps (Our Body)
18.02. / 14:00 Werkstattkino@silent green
Orlando, ma biographie politique (Orlando, My Political Biography)
18.02. / 13:00 Akademie der Künste
Perpetrator
18.02. / 12:30 Cubix 9
18.02. / 20:00 HAU Hebbel am Ufer (HAU1)
Între revoluii (Between Revolutions)
18.02. / 16:00 Zoo Palast 2
