The 20 films at the Berlinale Shorts affirm the festival as the most politically and socially conscious of the Big Five. We spotlight some to put on your radar.
Berlinale Shorts 2023: Complicating The Big Questions via the Short Form
Festivals
Reviews and dispatches exploring the best new cinema premiering around the world.
Descent Into Cinema Episode Four: Live Panorama Chat
Live from the Playce at the Berlinale, we discuss Drifter, Femme, Silver Haze and other fine panorama films to put on your radar.
Accept No Pleasure in the Manodrome
Move over Joker? There’s a new angry white man in town, courtesy of Jesse Eisenberg in the blistering, problematic, increasingly enjoyable Manodrome.
Mehran Tamadon Skillfully Recreates Iranian Prison in Where God is Not
The horrors of Iranian prison are horrifyingly revisited in this powerful, draining documentary film, asking if cinema has the power to change the state.
Travel into The Trans Imagination with Orlando: My Political Biography
Orlando: My Political Biography reframes Virginia Woolf’s seminal 1928 through the modern transgender experience. The result is a compelling act of imagination.
Pixar Gets the Hungarian Arthouse Treatment in White Plastic Sky
A bleak, arthouse cinema take on the classic Pixar formula, this tale of humanity’s last gasp shows you don’t need hundreds of millions to make a great sci-fi.
Member BlackBerrys?
BlackBerry takes you back to the halcyon days before the iPhone became the ubiqutious smartphone in this entertaining rise-and-fall tech sotry.
She Came to Me. She Didn’t Conquer.
The Berlinale 2023 opens with a trip aboard the tugboat of love. There is no need to get on. Here’s our take on Rebecca Miller’s She Came To Me.
Descent Into Cinema Podcast: Passages and Queer Panorama Preview
Is Passages a great movie or is it a classic case of Sundance-itis? Ahead of its European premiere at the Berlinale, we look at Ira Sachs’ latest.
Rotterdam 2023: The Three Types of Festival Film
Hybrid docu-fiction, serious European relationship dramas, and a big cross-border social issue drama, characterise a classic Rotterdam 2023 line up.