Twenty-five years after his cult TV series, Kir Royal, director Helmut Dietl has now come released a sort of ?sequel? for the big screen. Zettl focuses on the high-flying career of a ruthless media man in Berlin. As satire, however, the frigid figures in Zettl fail to warm up to viewers. ...
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This year's Berlin Film Festival proved that director Dieter Kosslick is honouring his committment to be political, proportional and popular. Ekkerhard Knörer only regrets that aesthetic criteria got left by the wayside.
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Jafar Panahi's "Offside" blows the whistle on female football fans in Iran. In Claude Chabrol's "Comedy of Power", a muck-raking Isabelle Huppert comes up against the fattest cats of all. And Amir Muhammad's "The Last Communist" portrays over 80 people before finding just that.
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A terribly simple tragedy: Valeska Griesebach's film with non-actors, "Longing". A nymphomaniac cop meets his match in Pang Ho-cheung's well-manicured "Isabella". And Mani Haghighi's "Men at Work" asks how many middle-aged Iranian men it takes to budge a rock.
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Rafi Pitt's "Zemestan" starts in bleakness and ends in despair. John Hillcoat brings Nick Cave's sweaty outback epic "The Propostition" seamlessly to the big screen. Matthew Barney has a whale of a time with Björk in "Drawing Restraint 9". Michael Winterbottom's "Road to Guantanamo" is 95 minutes of collateral damage.
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Storm Saxons and a shaved-headed Natalie Portman have people flocking to James McTeigue's "V for Vendetta". Cinema at its most despicable: Pen-ek Ratanaruang's "Invisible Waves", and loving a serial rapist: "Der Freie Wille" by Matthias Glasner.
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Detlev Buck's "Tough Enough" looks at the life of a rich boy in a rough area where the ultimate insult is "victim!" Terence Malick's "The New World" is little more than soft colonialist porn. Robert Altman's "A Prairie Home Companion" is good, harmless family entertainment. Chen Kaige's "The Promise" desires to blockbuster. Stephen Gaghan's "Syriana" is an introductory seminar on the dirty ol' oil business. And Oskar Roehler's "Atomised" has taken the horrible out of Houellebecq.
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The festival got off on a gentle note with Marc Evans' "Snow Cake". Blood, sex and gore - but not for gore's sake - soon took audiences by storm, though, with Sono Sion's "Strange Circus". Pernille Fischer Christensen's "En Soap" was sadly just a washout. And "Close to Home" by Dalia Hager and Vidi Bilu shows 18-year-old girls struggling to sound authoritative in their army uniforms on the streets of Jerusalem.
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This evening, Marc Evans' film "Snow Cake" will open the Berlinale film festival 2006. Ekkehard Knörer is keeping his eyes peeled for the mad and the beautiful, the puzzling and the devasting, understatement and excess. Stay with us for a front-row seat.
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In Michael Haneke's new film "Cache", a Parisian citizen is confronted with a dark episode from his childhood – and suddenly France's colonial history comes rushing to the surface. The Austrian director talked to Dominik Kamalzadeh about guilt, guilty consciences and the legacy of the Algerian war.
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Patrice Chereau describes his newest film "Gabrielle" and the challenge of adapting Joseph Conrad for the screen. An interview with Gerhard Midding.
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Andreas Dresen's "Summer in Berlin" hits the screens in Germany today. The sunny milieu film tells of cool nights, hard liquor and love in the time of Hartz IV. By Christoph Dieckmann
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Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier talks about sexual fantasies, the Pope, America, slavery and his new film "Manderlay" with an undaunted Katja Nicodemus.
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Christian Petzold's most recent film "Gespenster" ("Ghosts"), which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival this year, has now opened in German cinemas. Anke Leweke raves about this ghost story, set in Berlin's here and now.
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Sometimes the strong points of a director cannot be had without the
weak ones. "Don't Come Knocking" is Wim Wenders' best film in a long
time. By Katja Nicodemus
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The future of cinema is threatened by the rise of the DVD. But cinema is also working hard at its own downfall. By Georg Seeßlen
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