Berlin film festival reveals 2024 competition line-up

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'La Cocina'

Source: Panorama Global

‘La Cocina’

The 74th Berlin International Film Festival has revealed the 20 titles selected for its official Competition as well as its competitive Encounters strand.

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New films from Claire Burger, Olivier Assayas, Hong Sangsoo, Bruno Dumont, Abderrahmane Sissako and Mati Diop are among those selected for the Competition lineup, with stars including Rooney Mara, Gael Garcia Bernal, Isabelle Huppert and Cillian Murphy, who leads the festival’s opening film Small Things Like These.

Festival heads Carlo Chatrian and Mariette Rissenbeek unveiled the selections at the House of World Cultures in Berlin today (January 22).

All Competition titles are world premieres with the exception of Aaron Shimberg’s A Different Man, starring Sebastian Stan and Adam Pearson, which recently debuted at Sundance and will receive its international premiere in Berlin.

Six of the films are directed or co-directed by women – the same figure as last year – and two are debut features.

Among the selection is Langue Etrangere, the third feature by Camera d’Or winner Burger from the producer of Anatomy Of A Fall, Marie-Ange Luciani. The story centres on two teenage pen pals in France and Germany and stars Lilith Grasmug, newcomer Josefa Heinsius, Nina Hoss and Chiara Mastroianni.

Fellow French filmmaker Assayas, who won best director at Cannes in 2016 with Personal Shopper, will premiere Suspended Time in Competition. A Covid-era comedy about two couples who spend lockdown together, it stars Vincent Macaigne, Micha Lescot, Nine D’Urso and Nora Hamzawi.

South Korea’s Hong returns to Berlin, having had six films in Competition at the festival since 2008. His latest, A Traveler’s Needs, was described as a comedy and a “light but piercing take on human relationships” by Chatrian at the press conference. It stars French actress Huppert, who will also an receive honorary Golden Bear that should could not accept in-person when it was first bestowed in 2022. Huppert previously starred in Hong’s In Another Country (2012) and Claire’s Camera (2017), both of which premiered at Cannes.

Having played seven films at Cannes, France’s Dumont returns to Berlin for the first time since Camille Claudel 1915 screened in Competition in 2013. His anticipated science fiction feature The Empire stars Brandon Vlieghe, Lyna Khoudri and Anamaria Vartolomei.

Also selected is Black Tea by Abderrahmane Sissako, the Malian filmmaker’s first feature since Timbuktu, which played in Competition at Cannes in 2014 and went on to be Oscar-nominated. The story follows a runaway bride who leaves the Ivory Coast to start a new life in Guangzhou, China. The cast includes Nina Mélo and Chang Han.

French director Diop, whose Altantics won the grand prize of the jury at Cannes in 2019, will premiere her second film Dahomey in Berlin. The documentary is about the return of three statues back to the place from where they were stolen more than a century ago in Benin, Africa.

US actress Mara, who was Oscar-nominated for her performances in Carol and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, will be seen in La Cocina by Mexican director Alonso Ruizpalacios. Set entirely in the kitchen of a New York restaurant, the film marks the first outside of Mexico for Ruizpalacios, who was previously in Competition at Berlin with Museo in 2018, winning best screenplay, and A Cop Movie in 2018.

Mexican star Bernal takes the lead in Another End by Italy’s Piero Messina, a dystopian science-fiction drama about a widower who partners with a woman, played by Renate Reinsve, who has rented out her body in which the memory and consciousness of his late wife are temporarily implanted.

Competition titles from Germany include Dying by Matthias Glasner, his third time vying for the Golden Bear after The Free Will (2006) and Gnade (2012), with a starry ensemble cast that includes Lars Eidinger; and From Hilde With Love from Andreas Dresen, a wartime drama starring Liv Lisa Fries of Babylon Berlin as a woman who falls for an anti-Nazi resistance fighter.

Gustav Moller, director of Sundance 2018 audience award winner The Guilty (later remade in the US starring Jake Gyllenhaal), returns with Danish psychological thriller Sons. It centres on a prison officer who is faced with a dilemma when a young man from her past is transferred to her prison. The film stars Sidse Babett Knudsen, Sebastian Bull and Dar Salim.

A further eye-catching film is Pepe, the story of a hippo who was taken from his homeland in Africa to Columbia to reside in the private zoo of drug lord Pablo Escobar and is “narrated” by the animal. It is directed by the Dominican Republic’s Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias, whose Locarno award-winning feature Cocote played several festivals in 2017. Chatrian said the film featured a blend of genres and styles, making it the most “unclassifiable” film in the selection.

The 2024 Berlinale will run February 15-24, while the concurrent European Film Market (EFM) will take place February 15-21.

Titles have previously been announced for the Panorama, Forum, Classics, Generation and Special strands.

Lupita Nyong’o will head the international jury at this year’s festival, which will be the last edition headed by the departing Chatrian and Rissenbeek. Tricia Tuttle, former festival director of the BFI London Film Festival (LFF), will take charge starting with the 2025 edition.