#BERLINALE71: what we watching?!

By Adam Ray Palmer
 
It’s 1st March and we know what that means… it’s not only the start of Spring but the 71st edition of the Berlinale kicks off today!
 
There’s a packed programme over the next week and below, we outline which gems we will be catching…

TINA
Director: Dan Lindsay, T.J. Martin
Cast: Tina Turner, Kurt Loder, Oprah Winfrey, Roger Davies, Erwin Bach
Country: USA
 
What the festival says:
From her early career as the queen of R&B to her record-breaking sell-out arena tours of the 1980s, Tina Turner draws back the curtain to invite us into her private world in a way she has never done before. Revealing her innermost struggles, and sharing some of her most personal moments, Tina is the defining and inspirational record of one of the greatest survivors in modern music.

THE SCARY OF SIXTY-FIRST
Director: Dasha Nekrasova
Cast: Betsey Brown, Madeline Quinn, Dasha Nekrasova, Mark Rapaport
Country: USA
 
What the festival says:
In this feature debut by actor and podcast host Dasha Nekrasova, two mismatched roommates discover and relive the murky secrets of their new Upper East Side apartment. The film itself is haunted by Italian “giallo” movies and 1970s psychological horror. Both genres are reincarnated in a work that is well aware of its lineage and sets about challenging and demolishing each and every power and gender relationship.

NIGHT RAIDERS
Director: Danis Goulet
Cast: Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, Brooklyn Letexier-Hart, Alex Tarrant, Amanda Plummer, Gail Maurice, Violet Nelson
Country: Canada / New Zealand
 
What the festival says:
Director Danis Goulet’s cinematic dystopia is set in the near future. Night Raiders is not a classic genre film but a parable about the situation of the First Nations in North America. Told by strong female characters in Cree languages, the film is as disturbing as it is poetic.

PETITE MAMAN
Director: Céline Sciamma
Cast: Joséphine Sanz, Gabrielle Sanz, Nina Meurisse, Stéphane Varupenne, Margot Abascal
Country: France
 
What the festival says:
Taking part in the Berlinale for the second time, Céline Sciamma’s fifth film is a work of great intensity and maturity. Expressed via Claire Mathon’s luminous autumnal cinematography, the director’s gaze explores an important moment in the transition to adulthood with poetic precision. Once again, Sciamma examines the big questions in life from a resolutely female perspective. The power of memory and imagination are explored in a unique, emotionally resonant experience.

CRYPTOZOO
Director: Dash Shaw
Cast: Lake Bell, Michael Cera, Alex Karpovsky, Zoe Kazan, Louisa Krause, Angeliki Papoulia, Thomas Jay Ryan, Peter Stormare, Grace Zabriskie
Country: USA
 
What the festival says:
In Dash Shaw’s idiosyncratic, transgressive trip, utopic visions of hero and anti-hero are put to the test. Inspired by the psychedelic underground comics of the 1960s, this story situated between lucid dream and horror trip resonates like an echo in our present day.

CENSOR
Director: Prano Bailey-Bond
Cast: Niamh Algar, Michael Smiley, Nicholas Burns, Vincent Franklin, Sophia La Porta, Adrian Schiller, Clare Holman, Andrew Havill, Felicity Montagu
Country: UK
 
What the festival says:
Set in the 1980s, when the media-hyped debate about the effect of violent videos on society was at its peak and the Thatcher government was tightening censorship, director Prano Bailey-Bond’s debut is a bloody ode to the aesthetics of horror films of the time that looks at trauma, delusion and the power of images.

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