Taking stock of all the excellent films that have played at festivals in 2023 that you most probably haven’t heard of yet. From Cannes, Berlinale, and more.
Underseen Festival Favourites 2023
Category: New Directors
The latest reviews and interviews of directors on their first, second and third films.
goEast Film Festival Day Three: Resilient Faces in Broken Places
A Kazakh Western, a Serbian mining town and a Russian village on the edge of war teach us about the importance of resilience on day three of goEast.
goEast Film Festival Day Two: Crossing Borders
A quick jaunt to Mainz starts a day filled with characters crossing borders, looking for common threads that unite humanity.
goEast Film Festival Day One: The Rise of the Hybrids
An Armenian animated documentary and a shape-shifting Ukrainian 90s-set film noir characterise a strong start to goEast Film Festival.
Berlinale 2023 Perspektive Deutsches Kino: German Soft Power
The explicitly German section of the Berlinale, Perspektive Deutsches Kino is a fascinating example of film festival soft power diplomacy.
Further Adventures in the Panorama Section: Women Strike Back
The patriarchy pushed them to the edge. These three films from the Berlinale Panorama section show how women can fight back.
Berlinale Panorama 2023: Women on the Brink
Three feminine-focused films — from central Europe to the middle-east — push women to the brink in the Berlinale 2023 panorama section.
Berlinale Shorts 2023: Complicating The Big Questions via the Short Form
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.
Poetry and Parenting: Two Lithuanian Films at the Tallinn Film Festival 2022
France to the west, Russia to the east; Lithuania trying to do its thing in the middle. A survey of two Baltic premieres at the Tallinn Film Festival.
Death and Divorce: Two First Features from Tallinn Film Festival 2022
A couple of excellent first features from the Tallinn Film Festival show both physical and mental pain, and the different ways to reconcile the two.