Berlin Film Festival 2015

Despite being the son of a senator and a former government minister, Chilean director Pablo Larraín states that his political connections do not influence his work.  Yet his fifth feature, the winner of the Silver Bear - Grand Jury Prize at…

Financing a film is a notoriously tricky process. There are legendary stories of budgetary excess, but the problem nearly everyone faces is getting anything to be excessive with. Many great films almost fell at that first hurdle, while…

Fast paced and full of absurd comic situations, shot in black and white and wearing its affection for the French New Wave openly, Love, Theft and Other Entanglements is not what you’d expect from a film dealing with life in Palestine.…

Phan Dang Di’s account of a young photography student exploring new opportunities at the turn of the millennium in a country that itself is opening up to the world is a gorgeous affair. Whether out in the jungles of Mekong, or on the…

No one can accuse Russian director Alexey German Jr. of lacking ambition. His drifting, elliptical tour through the confusion in his homeland, told in fluid long takes and hazy colours, tries to create a state of the nation snapshot in just…

Have you ever felt life is beyond your control? Operating somewhere between knowing wink and madness, Japanese writer/director Sabu suggests there’s a good reason for this in his madcap comedy Chasuke’s Journey. Taking a high concept idea,…

In 1930, world famous Russian director Sergei Eisenstein found himself in Mexico prepping for an unfinishable project that would end in disgrace. Leftfield British filmmaker Peter Greenaway takes this semi-exile and turns it into a creative…

When Let the Bullets Fly first appeared in 2010 it felt like a breath of fresh air. Lighting up the box office and drawing a decent response from critics, Jiang Wen’s (director, writer and star) fast-paced dark comedy flew through China’s…

Life in the Albanian mountains offers up two choices. You’re either a man, or you obey one. For anyone who, through the misfortune of birth, fails to qualify for the first option, yet is unwilling to comply with the second, that’s just…

It’s been a tough old time for Oliver Hirschbiegel in recent years. His last film, the dreadful Diana (2013) saw everyone wade into the slaughter. It was a far cry from the international acclaim that greeted Downfall, his 2004 account of…