Richard Linklater, Radu Jude and two German entries in the bear competition

The 19 films competing for the Golden and Silver Bears under the direction of the new Berlinale director Tricia Tuttle from February 13th (until February 23rd) include two German productions. In “What Marielle Knows”, the second feature film by Frédéric Hambalek, who is previously known primarily as a screenwriter, Julia Jentsch and Felix Kramer play the parents of a girl who develops telepathic abilities. “Yunan” by the Syrian-Ukrainian-German director Ameer Fakher Eldin stars Hanna Schygulla, Sibel Kekilli and Tom Wlaschiha and is about an exiled author who wants to commit suicide on a Hallig.

At the presentation of the program on Tuesday afternoon in Berlin’s House of World Cultures, Tuttle will share the presentation of the competition line-up with her program directors Jacqueline Lyanga and Michael Stütz. Bear candidates include new works by 2021 Gold Bear winner Radu Jude (“Kontinental ’25”), festival regular Hong Sangsoo (“What Does that Nature Say to You”) and Richard Linklater, eleven years after his celebrated “Boyhood” returns to the Berlinale. “Blue Moon,” starring Ethan Hawke and Margaret Qualley, is about the Broadway composer duo Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart.

In “Dreams” by Michel Franco, Jessica Chastain plays a ballet dancer, in “The Ice Tower” by Frenchwoman Lucile Hadžihalilović, Marion Cotillard, among others, appears. In “Mother’s Baby” the Austrian Johanna Moder tells the story of a mother after a traumatic birth; in the Ukrainian documentary “Timestamp” by Kateryna Gornostai, the focus is on school: How does education work during war, how are school children and teachers doing?

At the beginning, the American Tuttle, who previously directed the London Film Festival, briefly welcomed those present in German, and then first announced the titles of the new “Perspectives” section with 14 debut films (including Constanze Klaue’s “Mit der Faust in die Welt” in English). Germany) as well as other films from the Berlinale Special and Special Gala series.

James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic “Like A Complete Unkown” with Timothée Chalamet will be shown there as a German premiere before the film opens in cinemas on February 29th.

Other specials include Burhan Qurbani’s Shakespeare adaptation “No Animal. So wild” based on “Richard III.”, Marcin Wierzchowski’s documentary “The German People” about the racist murders in Hanau in 2020 and Edgar Reitz’s “Leibniz – Chronicle of a Lost Image” with Edgar Selge, Lars Eidinger and Barbara Sukowa.

Documentary about the Hamas hostage David Cunio

The festival had already reported that the galas also included Bong Joon-ho’s eagerly anticipated “Mickey 17” with Robert Pattinson. In “The Thing with Feathers” by Dylan Southern, Benedict Cumberbatch stars as a grieving family man who has to raise his children alone after the death of his wife. The section also commemorates its publication 40 years ago with a documentary about the making of “Shoah” and a revival of Claude Lanzmann’s epochal nine-hour Holocaust documentary.

Also on the program: a documentary about Hamas hostage David Cunio by Tom Shoval. Last year, the outgoing Berlinale duo Carlo Chatrian and Mariette Rissenbeek were confronted with accusations of anti-Semitism after one-sided pro-Palestinian statements from prize winners and jurors at the Bear Gala. The festival was criticized, among other things, for not drawing attention by name to the fate of former Berlinale participant David Cunio (leading actor in Shoval’s Israeli drama “Youth” 2013). Cunio is still under the control of Hamas today.

The opening gala on February 13th with Tom Tykwer’s drama “Das Licht” (out of competition) will be broadcast live in seven cinemas in Germany, as Tricia Tuttle announced at the end of the program presentation. As already announced, the British actress Tilda Swinton will receive the Honorary Golden Bear at the gala; this year the jury president is the US director Todd Haynes.

Tuttle’s first press conference takes place quickly, almost a little too soberly; there is a working atmosphere at the HKW this morning. Before we get to the competition, Lyanga and Stütz briefly provide figures: 41 percent of the directors in the overall program are women, 4 percent are nonbinary, and the contributions come from 74 production countries.

In her opening statement, Tricia Tuttle briefly discussed the Berlinale as a political festival: “We cannot and do not want to shy away from it, it is in the DNA of the city and the festival,” she said. Although, as with all festivals, the news agenda may dominate the discourse in the short term, she hopes that the audience will primarily discuss the vital art form of film.