IONCINEMA.com’s Chief Film Critic Nicholas Bell reviewed the entire competition and more. Here is a comprehensive guide to all the feature film reviews from...
Free Bird: Fitch & White Unveil Inventive, Personal Homage
Watching something like Yo (Love is a Rebellious Bird) reifies the exceptional and unique nature of...
Grave of the Fireworks: Shinomiya Finds All the Colors in the Dark
For his debut film, A New Dawn, animator Yoshitoshi Shinomiya marries bureaucratic takeovers,...
Ghosts of Past & Present: Sultan Khoosat Hones His Visual Flair But Latest Devolves Into Silliness
A universal thematic thread of the past haunting its...
I Confess: Mohammadi's Myriad of Memory Celebrates Women of Iran Who Don't Stand Idly By
While we understand imprisonment as punishment par excellence, what Iranian...
As we predicted, Yellow Letters was a formidable film in the competition of twenty-two films. Here are the winners!
Golden Bear: Yellow Letters
Silver Bear Grand...
Strategy of Tragedy: Chen Overdoses on Drama in Sprawling Family Portrait
The most succinct aspect of Singaporean filmmaker Anthony Chen’s latest feature, We Are All...
It Doesn’t Follow: Linares Villegas’ Queer Horror Forgets the Fright Factor
Horror has long been a safe space to explore queer stories; from cult classics...
Perfect Blue: Covi & Frimmel Marinate in Memories
“Everything changing all the time. Even the air you breathing change,” notes a character in August Wilson’s...
This Makes Two of Us: Mitić Explores Binding Connection of Trauma & Silence
Adolescence is once again cinematically explored as a breaking point between innocence...
The Unbearable Likeness of Being: Trobisch Mines Banality in Family Drama
Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way…and sometimes those unhappy ways are...
Capitalism & The Cosmos: Jinwei Ambitiously Explores China’s Future with a Stark Warning For Its Present
Long have Chinese filmmakers used the medium of film...
All the Small Things: Eimbcke Explores the Pleasures of Disruption
The titular insects of Fernando Eimbcke’s latest feature, Flies (Moscas), metaphorically represent an unwanted, aggravating...
The Torn Birds: Thornton Returns to Brutality of the Australian Frontier
The sovereignty of Australia was never officially ceded by its First Nations peoples, succinctly...
Where Did Our Love Go?: Schanalec Deconstructs the Break-Up Drama
True to form, or rather, anti-form, Angela Schanelec’s latest exercise, My Wife Cries (Meine Frau...
(Get) Away From Her: Hammer Returns with Elder Ethical Dilemma
It’s been nearly twenty years since Lance Hammer’s 2008 debut Ballast announced a major new...
There Will (Not) Be Blood: Ottinger Returns with Anemic Vampire Comedy
New German Wave legend Ulrike Ottinger returns with her long gestating project The Blood...
Father Knows Best: Intimacy Cuts Deepest in d’Ansembourg’s Debut
“When porn has become the norm, intimacy is the new taboo,” reads an early tagline for...
Father Figure, Mother Tongue: Dulude-De Celles Curates Reconciliation
It turns out you can go home again…but don’t expect not to confront psychic wounds left untended,...
Days of Wine and Poses: Mundruczo Dances Around the Trauma
Hungarian filmmaker Kornél Mundruczó aims to repeat the critical acclaim following his Academy Award nominated...
Corporate Cannibals: Blondé Underwhelms with Ethical Reckoning
There’s an interesting idea behind Dust, which finds two Belgian entrepreneurs essentially navigating their last two days of...
A Self-Made Man: Schleinzer Explores the Privilege of Pants
If there’s a trough line (beyond the eponymous titles) of Austrian director Markus Schleinzer’s films, it’s...
Hysterical Intervention: Alper Gets Overwrought Exploring Tribalism
The land dispute at the center of Emin Alper’s latest film Salvation has all the trademarks of a...
Only Mothers Left Alive: Bergholm Tackles Motherhood Malaise
Finnish director Hanna Bergholm adds to the subgenre of motherhood body horror with Nightborn (Yön Lapsi), an arguably...
Family Rituals: Gomis Goes For Broke in Sprawling Epic
With his first narrative feature in nearly a decade, French-Senegalese director Alain Gomis formulates a complex...
A Jazzman’s Blues: Gee Strikes the Right Chords in Tender DocudramaE
British filmmaker Grant Gee, heretofore best known as a documentarian of various musical artists,...
How to Beat the High Cost of Fascism: Çatak Flounders in Blaring Treatise
Following his Academy Award nominated The Teacher’s Lounge (2023), Turkish-German director Ilker...
A Death in the Family: Bouzid Explores the Tolls of Open Secrets
What’s most expertly encapsulated in Tunisian filmmaker Leyla Bouzid’s third feature In a...
In the Realm of Defenses: Friedrich Examines Turmoils of the Working Class
Even in the democratic and social federal state of contemporary Germany, all is...
Love Audit: de la Rosa Defies the Odds with Star-Crossed Lovers
Much like the shifting ideals and hard won identities defining the protagonists of Ian...
After competing for the Golden Bear back in 2018 with The Heiresses (read review), Paraguayan filmmaker Marcelo Martinessi returns to the Berlinale with the...
There is a lot of unpack here with the official competition offerings which consists of two international premieres and twenty world premieres for a...
Last year's first iteration had the likes of Kahlil Joseph's BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions, Arnaud Dufeys and Charlotte Devillers' On vous croit and Urška...
Francisca Alegría, Alonso Ruizpalacios, Klaudia Reynicke, Ivan Grbovic and Amanda Nell Eu are among the filmmakers who'll be setting up shop for the upcoming...