‘Small Things Like These’, More

The Berlin Film Festival kicked off its 74th edition February 15 with the opening-night world premiere screening of Small Things Like These, the Irish drama starring Oscar-nominated Oppenheimer star Cillian Murphy. It started 10 days of debuts including for movies starring Rooney Mara, Isabelle Huppert, Gael García Bernal, Kristen Stewart and more.

This year’s Competition lineup features films from a swath of international filmmakers including Olivier Assayas, Mati Diop, Hong Sangsoo, Bruno Dumont and Abderrahmane Sissako.

The Berlinale runs through February 25.

Keep checking back below as Deadline reviews the best and buzziest movies of the festival. Click on the titles to read the full reviews.

Another End

Section: CompetitionDirector: Piero MessinaCast: Gael García Bernal, Renate Reinsve, Bérénice Bejo, Olivia Williams, Pal AronDeadline’s takeaway: The script, while ambitious, is laden with philosophical musings that often feel detached from the emotional core of the story. Another End never fully commits to exploring the psychological and ethical implications of its premise.

Architecton

Section: CompetitionDirector: Victor KossakovskyDeadline’s takeaway: Kossakovsky’s fascinating, magnetic film essay is in some ways a detective story about the world we live in, albeit one in which it is very easy to figure out whodunit (spoiler: we did it to ourselves). It also helps us to reassess what we’ve lost over the centuries. And, best of all, it isn’t depressing; [rather] … it is a warning sounded in the good faith of being heard in the nick of time.

Cuckoo

Section: Berlinale Special GalaDirector: Tilman SingerCast: Hunter Schafer, Dan Stevens, Jessica Henwick, Marton Csókás, Mila LieuDeadline’s takeaway: None of this is quite coherent. It might just be nonsense. Well, it is. But there is a cheerfully willing audience for this kind of film, and it no doubt will sell a lot of popcorn.

The Devil’s Bath

Section: CompetitionDirectors-screenwriters: Veronika Franz, Severin FialaCast: Anja Plaschg, David Scheid, Maria HofstätterDeadline’s takeaway: The powerful story of one woman’s madness but also the story of a way of life where the only escape hatch is death. As the story unfolds, its inherent violence is let loose with full, visceral force. Never less than unsettling and sometimes devastating, it is not easy viewing.

La Cocina

Section: CompetitionDirector: Alonso RuizpalaciosCast: Raul Briones, Rooney Mara, Anna Diaz, Motell Foster, Oded Fehr, Eduardo Olmos, Laura GomezDeadline’s takeaway: La Cocina is like The Bear on steroids, a black-and-white pressure cooker that builds to a fierce and explosive finale. It’s an unforgettable and gripping look inside not just a restaurant kitchen but the complicated lives of the invisible people who provide its heartbeat.

Dahomey

Section: CompetitionDirector-screenwriter: Mati DiopDeadline’s takeaway: The idea that our companion on this journey would be a talking statue first struck me as silly, ludicrously reminiscent of a voodoo doll come to life in a horror film — pretty much the last sort of association you would want in a film about West African culture. As the film unfolds, however, that voice of the past resonates with the seriousness of Diop’s project, pressing that past into the present like a mould being pressed into clay.

Dying

Section: CompetitionDirector-screenwriter: Matthias GlasnerCast: Lars Eidinger, Corinna Harfouch, Lilith Stangerberg, Hans-Uwe Bauer, Ronald ZehrfeldDeadline’s takeaway: To stuff so much death and dying into one story, however voluminous, is a formidable challenge, but Glasner manages his vast stage by allowing  waves of feeling to roll forward and then retreat; its intensity is measured, interspersed with those respites of humor.

Hors du Temps (Suspended Time)

Section: CompetitionDirector-screenwriter: Olivier AssayasCast: Vincent Macaigne, Micha Lescot, Nine D’Urso, Nora Hamzawi, Maud Wyler, Dominique Reymond, Magdalena LafontDeadline’s takeaway: Covid lockdown was perhaps the only break in normal life that the majority of us will ever experience. We have yet to reflect on it fully, and we still have little idea what the long-term effects will be. Assayas’ film, slight and playful though it is, is a stab in that dark.

Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger

Section: Berlinale SpecialDirector: David HintonSubjects: Emeric Pressburger and Michael Powell aka The ArchersDeadline’s takeaway: Martin Scorsese is our tour guide here, and he never hands over the reins in ponders the ups and downs of The Archers’ 33-year filmography. His own place in the pantheon is booked and paid for, but this very generous and, at times, endearingly humble film reminds us that film history has not always been so kind to its visionaries.

My Favorite Cake

Section: CompetitionDirectors-screenwriters: Maryam Moghaddam, Behtash SanaeehaCast: Lily Farhadpour, Esmail MehrabiDeadline’s takeaway: Gentle story is peppered with pointed jibes at the Iranian regime, making no bones about the fact that fun stopped with the Islamic Revolution. And neither the country nor the characters are allowed a happy ending, which speaks to the film’s integrity. To give in to that narrative temptation — to say that everything could work out nicely — would just be a lie.

Pepe

Section: CompetitionDirector: Nelson Carlos de Los Santos AriasCast: Jhon Narváez, Harmony Ahalwa, Fareed Matjila, Shifafure Faustinus, Jorge Puntillón García, Nicolás Marín Caly, Sor María Ríos, Steven AlexanderDeadline’s takeaway: Drug lord Pablo Escobar had a menagerie of exotic animals including what would become the first and only hippo killed in the Americas. Voiced by a chorus of actors, Pepe waxes poetically about his own death and the circumstances leading up to it, and his story becomes a cautionary tale to leave wild creatures where they belong.

The Roundup: Punishment

Section: Berlinale Special GalaDirector: Heo Myeong-haengCast: Don Lee, Kim Moo-yul, Park Ji-hwan, Lee Dong-hwiDeadline’s takeaway: Along with its moral certainty that punishment will be meted out to the right people, the latest Roundup installment is doubly reassuring in its comforting similarity to any number of other films. That said, it does that same thing at premium quality level; you get exactly the thrills, blood spills and entertainment you expect, stylishly packaged in a twisting, turning story that is relatively easy to follow, at least while it is happening.

Seven Veils

Section: Gala SpecialDirectors-screenwriter: Atom EgoyanCast: Amanda Seyfried, Rebecca Liddiard, Douglas Smith, Mark O’BrienDeadline’s takeaway: Amanda Seyfried’s Jeanine never cracks under pressures. Atom Egoyan habitually gives explosive emotions a wide berth, refusing to allow characters or audience any kind of catharsis. It is an unforgiving kind of stringency; his frigidity leaves many viewers cold. But it works well here.

Small Things Like These

Section: CompetitionDirector: Tim MielantsCast: Cillian Murphy, Eileen Walsh, Michelle Fairley, Emily Watson, Clare DunneDeadline’s takeaway: What a vivid story this might have been if, rather than sticking to the letter of Claire Keegan’s unadorned prose, the filmmakers had embraced and taken a leap of faith into the story’s subtextual horror.

Spaceman

Section: Berlinale Special GalaDirector: Johan RenckCast: Adam Sandler, Carey Mulligan, Kunal Nayyar, Lena Olin, Isabella RosselliniDeadline’s takeaway: For a time, there’s a low-key charm to all this, but it becomes a little wearing and finally, just starts to feel very long. It’s laudable that Adam Sandler went for it, since there’s not an ounce of broad humor anywhere to be found. But the perfect vehicle must be out there somewhere, waiting.

A Traveler’s Needs

Section: CompetitionDirector-screenwriter: Hong Sang-sooCast: Isabelle Huppert, Lee Hyeyoung, Ha Seongguk, Kwan HaehyoDeadline’s takeaway: Hong Sang-soo’s work, repetitive as it is, has a devoted constituency. The elusiveness of his open texts is attractive; his portraits of the Korean cultural elite intriguing; his artful angles on their modernist houses visually seductive. In this instance, however, these elements, taken together, feel frustratingly slight.

Treasure

Section: Berlinale Special GalaDirector: Julia von HeinzCast: Lena Dunham, Stephen Fry, Zbigniew Zamachowski, Iwona BielskaDeadline’s takeaway: Treasure is otherwise a strangely flat experience, the Fry-Dunham dream team barely sparking a laugh between them and the original story’s central theme of trauma passed down within Jewish families never explored in any visceral way.