The Next Day Berlin: Berlinale Film Festival Special
Top 15 Must-See Films at the 74th Berlinale
Hi,
It's that exciting time of year for cinephiles: Berlinale is here! Running from February 15th to 25th, this renowned festival will showcase approximately 400 films, with 20 selected to compete for the prestigious Golden Bear award. Among these 20 films, six are directed or co-directed by women.
We've asked our cinephile friend Genadijus Lesiuk to help us with curating what not to miss.
He is traveling from his hometown in Vilnius, Lithuania, specifically to attend this year's edition of the Berlinale. Genadijus regularly shares information about cinema on his Facebook page and has participated in various film festivals worldwide, including Cannes, Sundance, San Sebastian, Telluride, Venice and, of course Berlinale.
He has exclusively shared with us his list of the top 15 films that should not be missed! If you have any movie recommendations you don't want to miss, share them with us.
This is a special edition. Starting in March, we will introduce a monthly 'Save-the-Date' section, showcasing the best events for the upcoming month, perfect for those who like to plan ahead. Anticipate interviews, mini-guides to Berlin, special festivals, and unique events and experiences. These specials will be exclusively sent to paid subscribers as a token of our gratitude for their support.
Bye!
Lalai & Mateus
MY NEW FRIENDS (France, 2024, 85’)
🎥 André Téchiné, starring Isabelle Huppert, Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, Hafsia Herzi, Romane Meunier.
🗓️ Premiere 19.02, 6:30 pm. Zoo Palast 1. 🗣 French, Subtitles: English.
Lucie is an officer in the scientific police. She lives alone and her routine is disrupted by a new family moving into her apartment complex. As she befriends them, she discovers that Yann, the dad, has a history of opposing and breaking the law. Lucie faces a dilemma between her duty as a police officer and her wish to assist this family, which challenges her beliefs.
SOME RAIN MUST FALL (China / USA, 2024, 98’)
🎥 Qiu Yang, starring Yu Aier, Di Shike, Wei Yibo, Xu Tianyi, Gu Tingxiu.
🗓️ Premiere: 19.02, 12:30 pm. Akademie der Künste. 🗣 Wu, Mandarin, Subtitles: English
Cai is a housewife who seems to have lost track of who she is and wants to be. During her daughter’s basketball matches, she hurts an elderly woman. This event is a catalyst for a life that is spinning out of control.
BLACK TEA (France / Mauritania / Luxembourg / Taiwan / Cote d'Ivoire 2024, 111’)
🎥 Abderrahmane Sissako, starring Nina Mélo, Chang Han, Wu Ke-Xi, Michael Chang.
🗓️ Premiere: 21.02, 10 pm. Berlinale Palast. 🗣 Mandarin, French, English, Portuguese, Subtitles: English, German.
A lushly-lensed romance drama, “Black Tea” tells the story of Aya, who leaves the Ivory Coast after walking out on her wedding day and sets off to start a new life in Guangzhou, China. In this district where the African diaspora meets the Chinese culture, she gets hired in a tea boutique owned by Cai, a Chinese man. In the secrecy of the back shop, Cai decides to initiate Aya to the tea ceremony and their relationship slowly turns into tender love.
STERBEN / DYING (Germany, 2024, 183’)
🎥 Matthias Glasner, starring Lars Eidinger, Corinna Harfouch, Lilith Stangenberg, Ronald Zehrfeld, Robert Gwisdek.
🗓️ Premiere: 18.02, 6 pm. Berlinale Palast. 🗣 German, Subtitles: English.
"The Lunies" is a film that explores family dynamics, illness, and mortality. Through the interconnected stories of the Lunies family members - Lissy, Tom, Ellen, and others - the movie delves into relationships and the challenges of facing life's end. With strong performances and a heartfelt narrative, "The Lunies" offers a profound exploration of human emotions and the importance of connection.
HORS DU TEMPS / SUSPENDED TIME (France, 2024, 105’)
🎥 Olivier Assayas, starring Vincent Macaigne, Micha Lescot, Nine D’Urso, Nora Hamzawi, Maud Wyler.
🗓️ Premiere: 17.02, 10 pm. Berlinale Palast. 🗣 French, Subtitles: English, German.
Set during the unique circumstances of lockdown in April 2020, the film follows director Etienne and his brother Paul, along with their partners Morgane and Carole, as they navigate their childhood home. How far apart are the brothers from one another and from the roots they share? As the world around them becomes increasingly unsettling, a sense of unreality – and even of disturbing strangeness – invades their daily lives.
LA COCINA (Mexico / USA 2024, 139’)
🎥 Alonso Ruizpalacios, starring Raúl Briones Carmona, Rooney Mara.
🗓️ Premiere: 16.02, 9:45 pm. Berlinale Palast. 🗣 Spanish, English, Subtitles: English, German.
"La Cocina" offers a glimpse into the bustling chaos of The Grill, a New York eatery where the lunch rush is in full swing. When money disappears from the till, tensions among the undocumented immigrant workers, including Pedro, a Mexican cook with dreams beyond his job, and his forbidden love for Julia, an American waitress, reach a breaking point. As secrets unravel, the kitchen's rhythm is disrupted, leading to a dramatic climax. Inspired by Arnold Wesker's play, "La Cocina" is a tragicomic tribute to the unseen workers who feed us.
L’EMPIRE / THE EMPIRE (France / Italy / Germany / Belgium / Portugal, 2024, 110’)
🎥 Bruno Dumont, starring Lyna Khoudri, Anamaria Vartolomei, Camille Cottin, Fabrice Luchini, Brandon Vlieghe.
🗓️ Premiere: 18.02, 10 pm. Berlinale Palast. 🗣 French, Subtitles: English, German.
In a quiet and picturesque fishing village, something finally happens: a special baby is born. A child so unique and peculiar that it unleashes a secret war between extraterrestrial forces of good and evil. “The Empire” is a post-apocalyptic comedy set in a village in Northern France where a loner kills a farm girl’s violent father and is struck by a miracle.
ANOTHER END (Italy 2024, 129’)
🎥 Piero Messina, starring Gael García Bernal, Renate Reinsve, Bérénice Bejo, Olivia Williams.
🗓️ Premiere: 17.02, 7 pm. Berlinale Palast. 🗣 English, Spanish, Subtitles: English, German.
In the near future, a new technology places the consciousness of a dead person back into a living body in an attempt to ease the grief of separation and grant the bereft a little extra time to say goodbye.
DAHOMEY (France / Senegal / Benin, 2024, 67’)
🎥 Mati Diop, documentary.
🗓️ Premiere: 18.02, 3:45 pm. Berlinale Palast. 🗣 French, Fon, English, Subtitles: English, German.
The journey of 26 plundered royal treasures from the Kingdom of Dahomey exhibited in Paris, now being returned to Benin. Diop artistically voices a new generation's demands.
IN LIEBE, EURE HILDE / FROM HILDE, WITH LOVE (Germany, 2024, 124’)
🎥 Andreas Dresen, starring Liv Lisa Fries, Johannes Hegemann, Lisa Wagner, Alexander Scheer, Emma Bading.
🗓️ Premiere: 17.02, 3:30 pm. Berlinale Palast. 🗣 German, Subtitles: English.
In Berlin 1942, Hilde is a member of an anti-Nazi group. She falls in love with another member, Hans. The two spend a summer together until they get caught by the Gestapo and Hilde is imprisoned, eight months pregnant.
A DIFFERENT MAN (USA 2023, 112’)
🎥 Aaron Schimberg, starring Sebastian Stan, Renate Reinsve, Adam Pearson.
🗓️ Premiere: 16.02, 6:45 pm. Berlinale Palast. 🗣 English, Subtitles: German.
Edward, a shy aspiring actor with facial deformities, forms a warm friendship with his playwright neighbor, Ingrid. After undergoing a successful medical trial to change his appearance, he reinvents himself as a real estate agent named Guy. However, his past catches up with him when Ingrid's play about their friendship casts him in a fictionalized role. As he grapples with his identity, he encounters Oswald, who challenges his perception of self. "A Different Man" is a dark and yet witty thriller that delves into the murky sphere between self-perception and how others perceive us.
PEPE (Dominican Republic / Namibia / Germany / France, 2024, 122’)
🎥 Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias, starring Jhon Narváez, Sor María Ríos, Fareed Matjila, Harmony Ahalwa, Jorge Puntillón García.
🗓️ 20.02, 3:30 pm. Berlinale Palast. 🗣 Spanish, Afrikaans, Mbukushu, German, Subtitles: English, German.
A voice that claims to be from a hippopotamus. A voice that doesn't understand the perception of time. Pepe, the first and last hippo killed in the Americas, tells his story with the overwhelming orality of these towns.
YEOHAENGJAUI PILYO / TRAVELER’S NEEDS (South Korea, 2024, 90’)
🎥 Hong Sangsoo, starring Isabelle Huppert, Lee Hyeyoung, Kwon Haehyo, Cho Yunhee, Ha Seongguk.
🗓️ Premiere: 19.02, 10 pm, Berlinale Palast. 🗣 Korean, French, English, Subtitles: English, German.
A mysterious woman, claiming to be from France, sits on a park bench playing a child's recorder. With no means of support, she starts teaching French to two Korean women. She enjoys walking barefoot and lying on rocks, attempting to live life rationally despite hardships. To cope, she relies on makgeolli, a Korean alcoholic drink, for comfort.
SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE (Ireland / Belgium, 2024, 96’)
🎥 Tim Mielants, starring Cillian Murphy, Eileen Walsh, Michelle Fairley, Emily Watson, Clare Dunne.
🗓️ Premiere: 15.02, 7:30 pm, Berlinale Palast. 🗣 English, Subtitles: German.
It is 1985 in the run-up to Christmas in a small town in County Wexford, Ireland. Bill Furlong toils as a coal merchant to support himself, his wife and his five daughters. Early one morning while out delivering coal at the local convent, he makes a discovery that forces him to confront his past and the complicit silence of a town controlled by the Catholic Church. Based on the novel of the same name by Claire Keegan.
LANGUE ÉTRANGÈRE (France / Germany / Belgium, 2024, 105’)
🎥 Claire Burger, starring Lilith Grasmug, Josefa Heinsius, Nina Hoss, Chiara Mastroianni, Jalal Altawil.
🗓️ Premiere: 19.02, 6:30 pm. Berlinale Palast. 🗣 French, German, English, Subtitles: English, German.
Fanny, a 17-year-old schoolgirl from France, goes on a language exchange trip to Germany. In Leipzig, she meets her pen pal Lena who is the same age as her and who is eager to become involved in political activism. To impress Lena, the rather shy and withdrawn Fanny invents a different life for herself – but she quickly becomes trapped in her deceit.
In addition to our guest selection, we have each chosen one film to watch at this year's Berlinale.
Film selected by Mateus:
THE VISITOR (United Kingdom, 2024, 101’)
🎥 Bruce LaBruce, starring Bishop Black, Macklin Kowal, Amy Kingsmill, Kurtis Lincoln, Ray Filar.
🗓️ Premiere 17.02, 10 pm. International. 🗣 English.
The Visitor is a British-set reimagining of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1968 film Teorema. Pasolini’s enigmatic protagonist, known to everyone as “the visitor”, arrives at the house of an upper-class family and seduces each family member one after the other.
TEACHES OF PEACHES (Germany, 2024, 102’)
🎥 Philipp Fussenegger, Judy Landkammer with Peaches, Leslie Feist, Chilly Gonzales, Shirley Manson, Charlie Le Mindu
🗓️ 21.02, 9:30 pm, Zoo Palast 1. 🗣 English, German
This 2022 documentary chronicles Merrill Nisker's journey as Peaches during her "Teaches of Peaches Anniversary Tour." It seamlessly blends archival and tour footage, showcasing Peaches' evolution from a Canadian artist to a global cultural icon. With fearless originality, she challenges gender norms and advocates for LGBTQIA+ rights, leaving a profound mark on popular culture.