The 65th Berlin International Film Festival launches on February 5. Our Sub-Editor Jessica Ellicott will be there for the duration of the festival and here brings you her top picks from an immense lineup of over 400 films.
The Lost One of German Film History – Peter Lorre’s Der Verlorene (1951)
This week on Less Than (Five) Zero we look at a forgotten gem of German cinema, Peter Lorre’s companion piece to Lang’s M, DER VERLORENE.
You Have to See… How to Live in the German Federal Republic (dir. Harun Farocki, 1990)
This week we look at Harun Farocki’s How to Live in the German Federal Republic (1990) a darkly comic, fiercely intelligent yet criminally underseen essay film shot in West Berlin just before the fall of the wall.
China, Hollywood and Spike Jonze’s Her
Spike Jonze’s Her follows in the footsteps of recent films like Looper in shooting major scenes, in this case a large amount of the film, in China. We look at the use of Shanghai’s architecture and skyline here.
Strategies of Representation in Fatih Akin’s Head-On
Fatih Akin’s 2004 film Head-On (Gegen die Wand) defies easy categorisation into a particular film genre, marked as it is by contradiction. For while building a sense of realism and linear drama within the film, Akin simultaneously exposes the artifice of this drama with the frequent employment of Brechtian distancing strategies. Akin has himself acknowledged the particular influence