BERLINALE: THE WINNER WHO WASN’T THERE

In an extraordinary conclusion to this year’s Berlin Film Festival — The Berlinale — the Iranian director who won the Golden Bear for best film was unable to accept the honor — because he was barred from leaving his country by the current regime. In fact, Mohammad Rasoulof, whose film, There Is No Evil, won […]

HILLARY CLINTON, FILM STAR

First Lady, U.S. Senator, Secretary of State, presidential candidate, and now a film star. Yes, that’s Hillary Clinton on the cover of a special Berlinale edition of Variety. She arrived at the festival on Monday to promote a four-hour-long documentary series that was screened at the festival, a warts-and-all look, according to the director, Nanette […]

JIMINY CRICKET! HE’S ALIVE AGAIN!

Eighty years after The Walt Disney Co. brought Italian children’s-book writer Carlo Collodi’s characters from his The Adventures of Pinocchio to life, three other film studios are trying their hand at it. There’s Disney itself with a live-action version directed by Robert Zemeckis; there’s Netflix, with a “darker,” political version from Guillermo del Toro; and […]

PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A MADMAN

After the feelgoodiness of My Salinger Year, which opened the 70th edition of the Berlin Film Festival out of competition last week, the festival has now screened an unadulterated art film, Volevo nascondermi, — beautiful, magnificently acted, and as impressionistic and confusing as its subject, the Swiss/Italian artist Antonio Ligabue. You say you have never […]

UP(WARD) AND “ONWARD”

After turning out a plethora of sequels over the past several years, Pixar has returned this year with Onward, its first original-story film since 2017. And it has not lost the magic. Indeed, Onward has much to do with the loss of magic — and its rebirth. It is set in a fairy-tale land whose […]

BERLINALE KICKS OFF A DAY AFTER GERMAN SHOOTINGS

The 70th edition of the Berlin Film Festival — the Berlinale — opened on Wednesday, a day after a right-wing fanatic murdered nine Muslims at a hookah bar and a café in the German city of Hanau. The festival had issued a statement in advance saying that during the opening ceremonies, it would pause for […]