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“A Better Man,” backed by Norway’s Nrk, a byword these days for adventurous shows, has a first teaser, which sets out he set-up for one of the major buzz titles set to world premiere this weekend in Canneseries competition.

Produced by Maipo (“The Crossing”), which won big at Canneseries’ first edition with “State of Happiness,” “A Better Man” excels – like some other of the series which will bow at Canneseries over April 24-29 – in its large relevance, drilling down on Internet trolling, the cancel culture and men’s notions of masculinity. It’s also brief, as many series shorten, just four episodes. But its issues are wrapped in what becomes a social survival thriller. Most important, it’s also often touching.

Beta Film, which handles international distribution, has just dropped a teaser which presents the miniseries’ basic set-up.

“Do you know what the fat around the penis is called?...

The 2025 Berlin Film Festival jury, led by Todd Haynes, fell hard for their eventual Golden Bear winner “Dreams (Sex Love),” the third entry in a trilogy from Norwegian director Dag Johan Haugerud. Now, Strand Releasing has announced the acquisition of the film, about the fallout of a young woman’s (Ella Øverbye) crush on her female French teacher (Selome Emnetu), for North American release. Strand will also release the prior films in Haugerud’s Oslo Trilogy, “Sex” and “Love,” this summer as well. Watch the trailer for “Love” below.

Here’s the official synopsis of Berlin winner “Dreams,” as a refresh: “In ‘Dreams,’ Johanne falls in love for the first time, with her teacher. To preserve her feelings, she documents her emotions and experiences in writing. When her mother and grandmother read what she has written, they are initially shocked by its intimate content but soon see that it has literary potential.

Todd Haynes will receive the Golden Coach Award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival’s Directors Fortnight.

The honorary award is handed out by the governing body of the Cannes sidebar, the Society of French Directors (Sfr). The ceremony paying tribute to Haynes will take place on May 14 in Cannes.

“From ‘Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story to Safe,’ ‘Velvet Goldmine,’ ‘Carol’ and ‘May December,’ your films have been inhabited by a great faith in cinema’s experimental and narrative possibilities,” said the Srf in a letter signed by its members, including Julie Bertuccelli, Romain Cogitore, Cédric Klapisch and Zoé Wittock. The org praised Haynes for its “genius to move and mesmerize us in a single move, combining formal virtuoso with infinite empathy and tenderness.”

Haynes has been “relentlessly shaking up the norms and structures of cinematic representation in order to better question our social, racial and gender representations; as...

Berlin sales outfit M-Appeal has sealed further deals for Norwegian director Dag Johan Haugerud’s Berlinale Golden Bear winner “Dreams,” as well as additional sales for “Sex” and “Love,” the other films in the director’s trilogy.

“Dreams” follows Johanne, a young woman who documents her first love — an infatuation with her teacher — through intimate writing. When her mother and grandmother discover her work, their initial shock turns to recognition of its literary merit. As they weigh publishing it, Johanne is forced to reconcile fantasy with reality, while all three women explore their differing perspectives on love, sexuality and self-discovery.

Vendetta Films has acquired the trilogy for Australia and New Zealand. “We fell in love with ‘Dreams’ and we think this unique and mystery-filled spin on the age-old tale of a student falling for their teacher is perfect for modern audiences. We’re so excited to bring Dag Johan Haugerud...

Filmin distribuirá la trilogía completa. © Filmin

Dreams (Sex Love), la que se ha conquistado el Oso de Oro a la Mejor Película de la 75 edición del Festival de Berlín, llegará a España bajo la distribución de Filmin.

Dirigida por el noruego Dag Johan Haugerud, Dreams (Sex Love) es la entrega final de su trilogía antológica Sex, Love, Dreams, y cuenta la historia de Johanne (Selome Emnetu), una chica que se enamora perdidamente de su profesora de francés, experimentando su primer enamoramiento intenso. En un esfuerzo por preservar sus sentimientos, documenta sus emociones y experiencias por escrito. Cuando su madre y su abuela leen lo que ha escrito, al principio reaccionan con sorpresa ante su contenido íntimo, pero pronto quedan cautivadas por sus cualidades literarias.

Además, Sex, la primera película de esta trilogía, ya se encuentra disponible en la plataforma de streaming. Por su parte, Love, la segunda entrega, concursó en...

How far back in the Berlin Film Festival’s 75-year history do you have to go to find an edition as strong as this one? About a quarter-century, I reckon, to 2002, when “Bloody Sunday” and “Spirited Away” tied for the festival’s top prize.

As long as I can remember, Berlin held the distant-third spot in the so-called “Big Three” festivals, far behind Cannes and Venice in both prestige and its power to attract the caliber of movies that shape the conversation. It may never surpass its two older cousins, but for the first time in forever, under the direction of incoming festival chief Tricia Tuttle and her team, I felt a frisson of excitement bubbling up through the slippery ice and sub-zero temperatures.

Berlin has always felt like a slog, between the climate and the scandalously low hit-to-miss ratio in a sprawling lineup of nearly 200 films. Still, I hadn...

Gabriel Mascaro’s The Blue Trail is the winner of this year’s Berlin jury grid with an average score of 3.4 as Kateryna Gornostai’s Timestamp, Hong Sangsoo’s What Does Nature Say To You and Lionel Baier’s The Safe House completethe entries.

The Blue Trailstars Denise Weinberg in a dystopian fable following a 77-year-old who embarks on a journey through the Amazon. It received four four-stars (excellent) and five three-stars (good) and beats last year’s joint winners My Favourite Cake and The Devil’s Bath with 3.1.In the official Berlin award ceremony, the film received theSilver Bear grand...

The 75th Berlin Film Festival has concluded after nine days of fearless cinema in Germany. IndieWire was on the ground this year and earlier this week took a closer look at the top contenders for the Berlinale Golden Bear, which will be announced today along with other prizes.

That Rose Byrne and director Mary Bronstein had returned to the Palast red carpet meant their film “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” (which bowed early on at Berlin after world premiering at Sundance in January) was bound to win something. Byrne won the Silver Bear for Best Lead Performance for her turn as a stressed-out mother in crisis in the A24 psychodrama. Hopefully, this award gives Byrne momentum for the 2025 awards season ahead; it’s one of the great screen performances and certainly the crown of her career.

Today’s ceremony marked the first under new artistic director Tricia Tuttle,...

The 75th anniversary edition of the Berlin Film Festival — and the first under the leadership of its new chief, Tricia Tuttle — drew to a close Saturday night, as the jury awarded the Golden Bear to Dag Johan Haugerud’s “Dreams (Sex Love).”

There’s a special poetry in giving this film — the portrait of a teenage girl with a passionate imagination who pours her intense feelings toward a teacher into a transformative personal essay — the top prize at the Berlin Film Festival. The film represents the third installment in the Norwegian writer-director’s “Dream Sex Love” trilogy. The first, “Sex,” premiered a year earlier in the Panorama section of the 2024 Berlin Film Fest, while “Love” debuted in competition at Venice late last summer.

“The film is called ‘Drømmer’ — it’s Norwegian for ‘dreams’ — and this was beyond my wildest dreams really,” said Haugerud, in accepting the prize from jury president Todd Haynes.

There’s a scene at the start of Dreams (Drømmer) in which 17-year-old Johanne, played with churning depths of melancholy introspection by Ella Øverbye, explains to an instructor after a modern dance class why she didn’t try classical ballet: “Because I read somewhere that it’s about outdated gender attitudes and it should be banned.” The droll humor embedded in that sweeping, unironic dismissal — with its wry dig at the rigid codification of 21st century sexual politics and its absolute authority despite only the vaguest recollection of its source — is characteristic of Dag Johan Haugerud’s smart, sensitive queer coming-of-age story.

The film is the concluding chapter of the talented Norwegian writer-director’s trilogy about emotional and physical intimacy. That he’s made three thematically related but narratively distinct features in a year is remarkable enough; that they are all terrific, even more so. All three are extremely talky,...

Romanian writer-director Radu Jude’s social satire Kontinental ’25 has sold to a slew of European territories after world premiering in Berlin Film Festival’s competition.

Paris-based Luxbox, which is handling international sales, has sold the film to France (Météore Films), Italy (I Wonder Pictures), Poland (Aurora), Portugal (Films4you), Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark (Njutafilms), Greece (Cinobo), Estonia (Filmstop), Lithuania (Scanorama), Hungary (Mozinet), Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Kosovo, and Albania (McF), Slovenia (Fivia), and Bulgaria (Beta films). Other territories are currently in negotiations.

The film follows a bailiff who tries to find ways to ease her troubled...

Radu Jude’s Kontinental ’25 makes a strong debut on the Berlin critics jury grid while Johanna Moder’s Mother’s Baby, Ameer Fakher Eldin’s Yunan and Dag Johan Haugerud’s Dreams (Sex Love) also land.

Kontinental ’25scored a 3.1 average rating from the critics, putting it second behind Gabriel Mascaro’s The Blue Trail on 3.4. Jude’s Romanian-set drama received three four-stars (excellent) four three-stars (good) and two two-stars (average) – the latter from Barabara Hollender and Kalapapruek.

Click on the grid above for the most up-to-date version

Jude was last in Berlin with his Golden Bear-winning Bad Luck Banging Or Loony Porn...

Norwegian director Dag Johan Haugerud has completed his trilogy with “Dreams (Sex Love),” presented in Berlinale’s main competition. Its previous parts, “Sex” and “Love,” were shown at Berlinale’s Panorama and in Venice. M-Appeal handles sales.

“It’s very, very good that it’s over. It has been a long run. Making these three movies wasn’t that hard – releasing them so quickly was,” laughs Haugerud. Admitting the journey wasn’t actually supposed to end with “Dreams.”

“In Norway, it’s ‘Sex,’ ‘Dreams,’ ‘Love.’ Love is the conclusion,” he says.

“I thought it was interesting to first visit a couple that has been together for many years, then go back to first love, and eventually talk about what love can be if it’s as much about caring and responsibility as it is romantic. Also, both ‘Sex’ and ‘Dreams’ end with people going towards the city hall in...

Berlin-based world sales company M-Appeal has secured additional international distribution agreements for three of its Berlin Film Festival titles.

Among the latest sales, “Dreams,” which premieres today in Berlinale Competition, has been acquired by Films4You for Portugal, Swallow Wings for Taiwan and Beta Films for Bulgaria.

“Dreams” is Norwegian writer director Dag Johan Haugerud’s latest title, completing his “Sex Love Dreams” trilogy, with the previous titles having premiered at Berlinale and Venice last year. The film follows a young woman named Johanne, who’s intimate writings about her first love creates friction within her family, prompting her mother and grandmother to re-examine their own realities and dreams. Swallow Wings also bought all rights to “Sex” and “Love.”

Golden Bear contender “Living the Land,” directed by Huo Meng, has also found distribution in Bulgaria with Beta Films. The distributor, which will release the film theatrically, adds it to its recent lineup,...

Love on the Brain: Haugerud Caps Trilogy with Teenage Wasteland

With his latest film Dreams (Sex Love) (aka Drømmer), the final installment in his thematic trilogy, Norwegian director Dag Johan Haugerud clasps his most cohesive segment on a teenage girl’s ineffable, transformative brush with first love. The title of each film in the trilogy can feel misleading as each segment/situation/character is caught up in the intersection of these three states, each designed to reflect on the angle of intention. So perhaps it is most appropriate that the formative stage of desire, which leads to sex and love, begins in the mind of a dreamy seventeen-year-old who is led to comprehend her own awakening by comparing unnamed emotions to those of a fictional girl she first reads about in an obscure French novel.…...

The lineup for the 75th Berlin International Film Festival has been unveiled, with 19 films competing for the coveted Golden Bear. Outside of those, the festival will also host the world premiere of Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17, have a screening of James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown and offer up Tom Tykwer’s latest, The Light, which will be opening the festival.

Here is the full competition lineup for this year’s Berlin International Film Festival:

Ari – Léonor Serraille

Blue Moon – Richard Linklater

La cache (The Safe House) – Lionel Baier

Dreams – Michel Franco

Drømmer (Dreams (Sex Love)) – Dag Johan Haugerud

Geu jayeoni nege mworago hani (What Does That Nature Say to You) – Hong Sangsoo

Hot Milk – Rebecca Lenkiewicz

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You – Mary Bronstein

Kontinental ’25 – Radu Jude

El mensaje (The Message) – Iván Fund

Mother’s Baby – Johanna Moder

O último azul (The Blue Trail) – Gabriel Mascaro

Reflet...

The Berlin Film Festival has unveiled the lineup for the 2025 edition, running February 13-23. It’s the first official lineup overseen by new artistic director and former BFI London Film Festival leader Tricia Tuttle, who succeeds Carlo Chatrian and brings her background as an American journalist and curator to the annual German showcase. She’s also working with co-directors of programming, Jacqueline Lyanga and Michael Stütz, to help reposition the Berlinale’s profile among the great global film festivals and lure bigger-name filmmakers in the process.

This year’s lineup, announced Tuesday, January 21, features new films from Richard Linklater, Michel Franco, Rebecca Lenkiewicz, Hong Sangsoo (“What Does That Nature Say to You”), Radu Jude (“Kontinental ’25”), and Lucile Hadžihalilović (“The Ice Tower”). Already confirmed in the mix are “Mickey 17” from Bong Joon Ho and Ira Sachs’ Sundance premiere “Peter Hujar’s Day,” plus Tom Tykwer’s “The Light” opening the festival.

Following last week’s lineup announcement, the Berlinale 2025 has now fleshed out its slate with the Competition, Special, and Perspectives sections. Highlights include the world premieres of Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon starring Ethan Hawke, Margaret Qualley, Bobby Cannavale, and Andrew Scott; Radu Jude’s Kontinental ’25; Hong Sangsoo’s What Does that Nature Say to You; Michel Franco’s Dreams starring Jessica Chastain; Lucile Hadžihalilović’s The Ice Tower starring Marion Cotillard; and Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s Hot Milk with Emma Mackey, Fiona Shaw, and Vicky Krieps.

The festival will also include international premieres from Julia Loktev, Mary Bronstein, Kahlil Joseph, and more. In terms of omissions for films that potentially could have been a strong fit: there’s no Steven Soderberg’s Black Bag, Wes Anderson’s German production The Phoenician Scheme, nor Berlinale regular Christian Petzold, who wrapped Miroirs No. 3 only a few months ago.

Check out the lineup...

The Berlin Film Festival on Tuesday unveiled the full list of titles set for its official competition alongside perspective and specials sidebars.

A total of 19 films have been selected for the international competition. It’s a buzzy selection with multiple titles that have been anticipated and boast high-profile names. Highlights include Richard Linklater’s latest feature Blue Moon, starring Ethan Hawke, Margaret Qualley, Bobby Cannavale and Andrew Scott. Mexican filmmaker Michel Franco launches his latest title Dreams in competition. The film stars Jessica Chastain, Isaac Hernández and Rupert Friend. Franco last worked with Chastain on the Venice competition title Memory.

Elsewhere, Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude lands in competition with Kontinental ’25. Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s Hot Milk starring Emma Mackey, Fiona Shaw and Vicky Krieps also secures a spot alongside Hong Sangsoo’s latest What Does that Nature Say to You, and Mumblecore veteran Mary Bronstein returns as a director with If I Had Legs I’d Kick You...