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Berlin International Film Festival

Berlin International Film Festival
Reporting on the most famous and fashionable, and the films, at the annual Berlin International Film Festival.
last updated:
9 September, 2024
Josephine Siao at an event in Hong Kong in 2011. Photo: SCMP
Hong Kong celebrities and icons

Profile | From child star to activist, Hong Kong actress Josephine Siao’s career

Josephine Siao began her acting career aged 6 and made over 100 films before becoming deaf. She is an activist against child sexual abuse.

Asian cinema: Hong Kong film

Review | All Shall Be Well: Hong Kong LGBTQ drama highlights legal loophole

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Asian cinema: Hong Kong film

10 of the best movies at the 2024 Berlin International Film Festival

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Asian cinema: Korean films

Review | The Roundup: Punishment – Ma Dong-seok returns as po-faced punching machine

The Roundup: Punishment, which premiered at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, sees Korean hard man Ma Dong-seok return as a no-nonsense cop who punches his way through a gang of internet scammers.

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Ma Dong-seok as po-faced detective Ma in a still from The Roundup: Punishment (category TBC). Directed by Heo Myeong-haeng and co-starring Kim Moo-yeol and Park Ji-hwan. Photo: ABO Entertainment & Bigpunch Pictures & Hong Film & B.A. Entertainment
Asian cinema: Chinese films

Review | Above the Dust: Wang Xiaoshuai evokes Christopher Nolan in rural drama

Above the Dust follows a 10-year-old boy in China who dreams of owning a water pistol, and who goes on a journey through his grandfather’s memories of the 1950s and his terrible misdeeds at the time.

Asian cinema

Review | Shambhala: first Nepalese movie ever to compete in Berlin is a masterpiece

Shambala, the first Nepalese film selected for the Berlin Film Festival’s main competition, is an unhurried masterpiece about a Nepalese woman searching for her husband in the Himalayas.

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European cinema

Review | Spaceman: Netflix sci-fi drama starring Adam Sandler squanders its potential

Starring Adam Sandler, Carey Mulligan and Paul Dano, Netflix sci-fi Spaceman – which premiered at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival – has its moments, but director Johan Renck struggles to sustain interest.

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Adam Sandler (left) and the spider-like Hanus (voiced by Paul Dano) in a still from Spaceman, directed by Johan Renckand and co-starring Carey Mulligan. The movie premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival 2024. Photo: Netflix
Asian cinema

Review | Black Tea: film about African life in China massively disappoints

Debuting at Berlin 2024, Black Tea, the first film about Africans in China made by an African filmmaker, exhibits a tone-deaf understanding of what the diaspora’s experience is like in the country.

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Asian cinema: Hong Kong film

‘Shocking’ true stories on Hong Kong gay couples’ rights inspire new film

Ray Yeung’s film All Shall Be Well, about the struggles of a gay woman after her partner dies, is based on ‘shocking’ true events. The Hong Kong director talks about rights for same-sex couples.

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Asian cinema: Korean films

Review | A Traveler’s Needs: Isabelle Huppert leads Hong Sang-soo’s latest enigma

Korean director Hong Sang-soo returns to the Berlin International Film Festival with another typically opaque drama – in A Traveler’s Needs, Isabelle Huppert plays a mystery woman teaching French in Korea.

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Isabelle Huppert in a still from A Traveler’s Needs. Photo: Jeonwonsa Film Co
Asian cinema: Chinese films

Review | Some Rain Must Fall: Chinese drama exposes cracks in a middle-class family

Director Qiu Yang’s Some Rain Must Fall centres on a well-off woman whose family fragments after an accident, in a critique on damaging dysfunctions present in the lives of China’s middle class.

Yu Aier in a still from Some Rain Must Fall (category TBC), directed by Qiu Yang and co-starring Di Shike and Wei Yibo. Photo: Wild Grass Films
European cinema

Review | Another End: Gael Garcia Bernal lights up a derivative sci-fi tale

Gael Garcia Bernal plays a widower whose wife is reanimated in the body of another woman (Renate Reinsve). Piero Messina’s film is hackneyed and gets bogged down in jargon, but is visually appealing.

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Asian cinema: Chinese films

Like a Chinese Michael Crichton, Lin Jianjie went from science to filmmaking

Brief History of a Family made a splash at Sundance and is about to screen at the Berlin film festival. Its Chinese director, Lin Jianjie, reflects on its subject – China’s middle class – and dreamlike ending.

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Asian cinema: Chinese films

The 10 best films of Zhang Yimou, director from China’s fifth generation

Zhang Yimou has directed wuxia epics (Hero, Shadow), comedies (One Second, Keep Cool) and films about 20th-century China (Raise the Red Lantern, Red Sorghum). Here is our pick of his top 10 films.

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Director Zhang Yimou (above) introduced Zhang Ziyi to the world, made Gong Li his muse, and gave us art-house films, martial arts epics and quirky comedies. Photo: Getty Images
Asian cinema: Hong Kong film

Review | Mad Fate: destiny vs free will in absurdist Hong Kong murder thriller

Lam Ka-tung and Mirror’s Lokman Yeung try to exert their free will and change their destiny in director Soi Cheang’s Hong Kong-set genre thrill ride with a dash of fantasy thrown in.

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Lokman Yeung (left) and Lam Ka-tung in a still from “Mad Fate”.
Asian cinema: Korean films

Netflix thriller Kill Boksoon star Jeon Do-yeon on playing mum and assassin

Jeon Do-yeon, the star of Netflix Korean thriller about an assassin with a wayward daughter, talked at the Berlin International Film Festival about her first time playing a killer and what it means to be a good parent.

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Asian cinema: Korean films

Exclusive | ‘It’s a restart for me’: Fan Bingbing on return to acting after tax scandal

Chinese actress Fan Bingbing, at the Berlin International Film Festival with her new film Green Night, opens up about how tough it was not acting for five years, and what she learned from it.

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American cinema

10 of the best from Berlin film festival 2023, from Past Lives to Reality

From Past Lives, a beautifully bittersweet romance that may go on to win multiple awards, to true-life drama Reality, starring Sydney Sweeney, our pick of 10 of the best movies at this year’s Berlin film festival.

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Sydney Sweeney in a still from Reality. Photo: Seaview
Celebrity style

18 most dazzling celebrity looks at the Berlin Film Festival 2023

From Anne Hathaway’s see-through gown and Mia Goth’s monochromatic look to Nanoka Hara’s elegant white dress, here are the boldest red carpet outfits at this year’s Berlinale

Germany

French documentary On the Adamant wins top prize at Berlinale film festival

The film, about adults suffering from mental disorders, was directed by Nicolas Philibert. The film festival was kicked off, via video link, by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Asian cinema: Chinese films

Review | Art College 1994: Chinese slacker animation ponders art, life and love

Have A Nice Day director Liu Jian returns with an ensemble story, set in the 1990s, whose protagonists are caught between traditional values and modernism. His animation is stunning.

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A still from Art College 1994, directed by Liu Jian and shown in competition at the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival.
Asian cinema: Korean films

Review | Green Night: Fan Bingbing anchors unwieldy tale of sex, crime and violence

Fan Bingbing makes an audacious comeback after nearly five years out of the limelight for tax evasion in Green Night. Thelma & Louise meets Blue is the Warmest Colour in a flashy but flawed film.

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Fan Bingbing (left) and Lee Joo-young in a still from Green Night, the Chinese actress’ first film since a tax scandal nearly five years ago.
Asian cinema: Japanese films

Review | Suzume: Makoto Shinkai’s beguiling coming-of-age fantasy

In competition at the Berlin International Film Festival, Suzume is an extraordinary achievement. Smart, sassy and weaving fantasy elements into a contemporary story, it is inspired by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake.

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Asian cinema: Korean films

Review | In Water: Hong Sang-soo’s latest mini-movie is a chore to sit through

Hong Sang-soo wrote, produced, directed, edited and composed the score for this story about filmmaking. His decision to shoot many scenes out of focus makes the 61-minute film a chore to watch.

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Asian cinema: Chinese films

‘I think Chinese women are much stronger than Chinese men’ – filmmaker

Korean-Chinese filmmaker Zhang Lu says his new film The Shadowless Tower, with its spirited and independent female lead, maybe ‘reflects reality’ in how gender roles are changing in China.

Huang Yao (left) and Xin Baiqing in a still from The Shadowless Tower.
American cinema

Review | Past Lives: Celine Song’s tender, touching romance about first loves

Celine Song’s gentle romance stars Greta Lee and Teo Yoo as childhood friends in Korea who reconnect online after 12 years apart, and eventually meet again in New York.

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Greta Lee (left) and Teo Yoo in a still from Past Lives, directed by Celine Song. Photo: Jon Pack.
Asian cinema: Chinese films

Review | The Shadowless Tower: gentle soul-searching in Chinese midlife drama

In Chinese director Zhang Lu’s gentle, slow-moving tale, a middle-aged divorcee who is in a relationship with a younger woman has to decide whether he wants to reunite with his estranged father.

Asian cinema: Korean films

Review | Kill Boksoon: Jeon Do-yeon plays assassin in visceral Korean thriller

There are shades of Keanu Reeves’ John Wick in Jeon’s character, Gil Boksoon, an assassin who decides to retire. The action is visceral, the body count astronomical, but it’s all a bit cold.

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