This year’s Berlinale Shorts reveals an obsession with the ongoing crises of modernity, while revealing biases about the types of stories allowed to be told.
Berlinale Shorts 2024: The Detritus of Modernity
Category: Berlinale
The mostest film festival in the world. An unconquerable mountain of movies, every February.
Pepe is Dead. Long Live Pepe.
Hippos become a metaphor for Colombia, the state of humanity and the world’s capacity for cruelty in Nelson Carlo De Los Santos Arias’s unclassifiable Pepe.
Matt and Mara, Between Poetry and Prose
Finding that magical, liminal space between poetry and prose, Kazik Radwanski’s Matt and Mara cleverly captures the contradictions of the human imagination.
Through Rocks and Clouds. Natural Beauty and Tranquil Existence
Set in the gorgeous Peruvian Andes, the charming alpaca-based tale Through Rocks and Clouds exudes a quiet and stirring power. From Berlinale Generation.
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.
Isabelle Huppert is an Agent of Chaos in A Traveler’s Needs
Isabelle Huppert is the worst French teacher of all time in Hong Sangsoo’s sly and very funny comment on Korean national anxieties.
Architecton Insists Upon Itself
Architecton has some awe-inspiring visuals, but its let down by its distracting high frame rate and suspect choice of images.
Sterben Hits the Thin Line with Ease
Funnier than most out-and-out comedies, Sterben captures the messy absurdity of life in all its glory, despite, or perhaps, because of, the sad subject matter.
Talking About Our Generation
Berlinale Generation explores the world from a childlike or teenage perspective. We discovered the stories worth highlighting from this year’s Berlinale.
Two Glasses of Wine and a Packet of Chips
Suspended Time (Olivier Assayas, 2024) is the lockdown comedy that finds little dramatic potential in its set-up, feeling like a 100-minute episode of a sitcom.