(by Francesco Gallo).
Emigration and the search for happiness are the two connecting threads of the 66th Berlin Film Festival that began Wednesday. The jury will be led by Meryl Streep but will also include Italy's Alba Rohrwacher. A single Italian film will be competing for the top prize - the documentary 'Fuocoammare' by Gianfranco Rosi, who won a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival with 'Sacro Gra'.
The following 17 films will be competing with the Italian documentary. - 24 WEEKS (Germany) by Anne Zohra Berrached. An actress finds out she is pregnant with a Down's Syndrome child. The film focuses on maternity and ethics, as well as on women under the eye of the mass media. - ALONE IN BERLIN (Germany/France/UK) by Vincent Perez with Brendan Gleeson and Emma Thompson. Set in 1940s Berlin, the films focuses on a working-class couple whose only son has died in the war, and who decide to fight Nazism through a resistance campaign based on postcards against Hitler. - THINGS TO COME (France/Germany) by Mia Hansen-Love, starring Isabelle Huppert. Nathalie and Heinz, both philosophy teachers, live an ordinary life until Heinz falls in love with another woman. - BORIS SANS BEATRICE (Canada) by Denis Coté. Set in Québec, the film's protagonist Boris Malinovsky is a confident, proud and strong man, but his Canadian government minister wife suffers from depression. Apparently to distract himself, Boris has an affair with his colleague Helga and makes passes at his maid, Klara. - LETTERS FROM WAR (Portugal) by Ivo M. Ferreira, 1971.
António Lobo Antunes is upset when he is called up by the army to serve as a doctor in Angola. His sole consolation are the letters to his wife, but in the end something breaks inside.
- CROSSCURRENT (China) by Yang Chao. Gao Chun and his friend Jin Ye buy an old barge to make some money with transportation along the Yangtze River, but the vessel gets lost in a mysterious fog. Gao Chun nonetheless stops in every port to visit prostitutes, who are always the same woman. - A DRAGON ARRIVES! (Iran) by Mani Haghighi. On an island, a car crosses a cemetery towards an abandoned ship on which a political prisoner has hanged himself. The walls of the ship are covered with his cryptic writings, which the detective Hafizi uses to prove the legend that earthquakes happen when anyone is buried in the cemetery. - GENIUS (United Kingdom/USA) by Michael Grandage with Colin Firth and Jude Law. The film explores the long-lasting friendship between the literary great Thomas Wolfe and publisher Max Perkins. - A LULLABY TO THE SORROWFUL MYSTERY (Philippines/Singapore) by Lav Diaz, about the father of the Philippine revolution against Spain, who was sentenced to death and whose body was never found. - HEDI (Tunisia/Belgium/France) by Mohamed Ben Attia. Hédi is a young man who always prefers to wait, until he meets a young hotel worker named Rim. - THE COMMUNE (Denmark/Sweden/Netherlands) by Thomas Vinterberg. Set in the 1970s, the film depicts the lives of individuals divided between personal desires, solidarity and tolerance. - MIDNIGHT SPECIAL (USA) by Jeff Nichols, with Michael Shannon, Kirsten Dunst, Sam Shepard and Michael Shannon. A father and son flee religious extremists, the government and the police. - NEWS FROM PLANET MARS (France/Belgium) by Dominil Moll.
Philippe Mars is trying to be a good father, husband and brother, but this does not prevent his son being a vegan, his daughter a loser and his sister a seller of large paintings of his nude parents. - BEING 17 (France) by André Téchiné, starring Sandrine Kiberlain. Damien lives with his mother in an army barracks while his soldier father is on a mission. He takes fighting lessons to defend himself from bullies who see him as too effeminate at school. - DEATH IN SARAJEVO (France/Bosnia) by Danis Tanovic. Hotel Sarajevo is preparing an EU evening marking the centenary of the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand. The staff threatens to strike and so the director, Omer, asks a strip club manager for help. - SOY NERO (Germany/France/Mexico) by Rafi Pitts. A 19-yar-old Mexican escapes into the desert from a border patrol but is captured. He eventually manages to get to the US and meet up with his brother, Jesus, but quickly understands how difficult it is to live as an illegal alien. Thus he decides to join to army to get citizenship. - ZERO DAYS (USA) by Alex Gibney. A documentary about Facebook developers fighting hackers, criminal activities and intrusions. - UNITED STATES OF LOVE (Poland/Sweden) by Tomasz Wasilewski. Poland, 1990. Communism has fallen and there is a sense of freedom as well as fear of the future. Four women decide to fight for their happiness.
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