A washed-up Austrian MMA fighter finds herself immersed in a strange Jordanian family in Kurdwin Ayub’s Mond, her much-anticipated follow-up to Sonne.
Mond Offers a Nuanced Cross-Cultural Tale of Female Solidarity
Jared Abbott
Jared loves movies and lives with Kiki in Berlin.
Plastic Guns. A Perfect Shitpost.
Jean-Christophe Meurisse’s Plastic Guns doubles down on the provocations of Bloody Oranges in an off-kilter, hilarious and deeply nasty farce.
Baby Works His Way Out of a Corner
Marcelo Caetano’s Baby might combine reliable and clichéd tropes, but Caetano’s sex work study succeeds thanks to its keen observation of queer communities.
Block Pass. A Tyred Vintage.
Antoine Chevrollier’s Block Pass captures its working-class milieu well but suffers due to its tired secondhand framing of queer suffering.
Sauna Day. Intimate Masculinity on Display.
Sauna Day, Anna Hints follow-up to Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, trades female intimacy for male suppression, to eroticised and compelling results.
“This is a story of becoming” – Philipp Fussenegger, Judy Landkammer and Susanne Heuer on The Teaches of Peaches
Near the 25th anniversary of Peaches’ explosive second album, The Teaches of Peaches gives gret insight into her life. We talked with the team behind the film.
Foreign Language: Sex, Lies and Chocolate Mushrooms
As messy as its synopsis is understated, Claire Burger’s Foreign Language is a heady mix of teenage sexuality and muddled political engagement.
Young Hearts Run Free. It’s Alright.
Coming-out stories in Generation are a dime-a-dozen. Thankfully Anthony Schattman’s Young Hearts rises above the crop thanks to its authentic performances.
Into the Panorama-Verse
The Panorama section of the Berlinale probes the limits of human sexuality, violence and capacity for connection. Here’s our master list of Panorama reviews.
Best Festival Films and Hidden Festival Gems 2023
Avoiding consensus for our top 2023 picks, Journey Into Cinema focuses on both the best festival films and the finest hidden gems.