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When German director Frédéric Hambalek first started writing What Marielle Knows, he had no children. By the time the film finally made it to screen, premiering in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival, he had two. As it turned out, Parenthood would shape the film unexpectedly.

In the high-concept dark dramedy, Hambalek carries out a social experiment. The titular teenage girl (played by Laeni Geiseler, a revelation) receives telepathic powers after she’s smacked in the face by her best friend. Suddenly, Marielle has the power to see and hear what her mother, Julia (Julia Jentsch), and father, Tobias (Felix Kramer), are doing, whether they’re off at work, sneaking a smoke and flirting with office colleagues, or engaging in pillow talk in the bedroom with the door closed. Suddenly, under 24/7 observation, Tobias and Julia are forced to confront their hypocrisies and contradictions.

“The idea, before I had kids,...

Frédéric Hambalek’s dark comedy What Marielle Knows, about a teenager with the power to read her parents’ minds, has inked multiple territory deals following its Berlinale premiere in competition.

The film has sold across Europe to Paname Distribution in France, Cineart in Benelux, Karma Films in Spain, Alambique in Portugal, Edge Entertainment in Scandinavia, Aurora in Poland, Film Europe for Czech Republic and Slovakia, Mozinet in Hungary, Beta in Bulgaria, Scanorama in the Baltics, and McF Megacom in Former Yugoslavia. Palace Films will distribute the film in Australia and New Zealand, Bir Film in Turkey, Falcon in Indonesia, Cine Canibal...

Like a Yorgos Lanthimos movie co-directed with M. Night Shyamalan, the dark supernatural satire What Marielle Knows (Was Marielle weiss) takes a Hollywood high concept and turns it into a scathing comedy about a bourgeois family in deep crisis.

This second feature from German writer-director Frédéric Hambalek is a big step up from his no-budget debut, Model Olimpia, which mined similar conceptual terrain. Sharply designed and well-performed, if a bit thin in the long run, the film premiered in competition at the Berlinale, where it could spark interest among high-end arthouse distributors. It also has some remake potential — although a broader, more audience-friendly version would probably have to remove all the graphic sex talk and child-slapping.

If the pitch behind Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense can be summed up by the famous line “I see dead people,” the major twist in What Marielle Knows, which occurs at the very start of the movie,...

It turns out Marielle knows a whole lot, far too much for her parents’ comfort. In fact, after suddenly developing telepathic abilities, Marielle knows everything her parents do and say, which needless to say isn’t exactly a welcome development, either for her or her mom and dad. In his sophomore feature What Marielle Knows, Frédéric Hambalek imagines just how awkward it would be for a “normal” middle-class couple whose lives are built upon little daily lies to cope with a child who calls them out on every hidden action and fib.

It’s a good premise, and for the most part Hambalek plays it well by keeping it as natural as possible, minimizing the paranormal element and homing in on classic male/female behavior. But that’s the problem: it’s all rather too classic, too predictable in “what a man does” and “what a woman does.” What Marielle Knows is solid,...

It all starts with a slap. After getting into a fight at school, Marielle (Laeni Geiseler) spontaneously develops the capacity to eavesdrop on her parents’ lives. Whether the teenage girl wants to or not, she can sense what her mom and dad are doing at every moment — an uncanny (and highly inconvenient) ability that disrupts the tidy sense of mutual respect her family had been maintaining until that point. Come to find, most of the things Julia (Julia Jentsch) and Tobias (Felix Kramer) tell one another around the kitchen table aren’t true, a subtle yet essential observation keenly revealed by “What Marielle Knows.”

In nearly all families, it’s the adults who have the upper hand, monitoring how their children behave, while carefully filtering which details they choose to share. But in writer-director Frédéric Hambalek’s intriguing thought experiment, that dynamic is reversed, and a young girl inexplicably gains the upper hand,...

In this fantasy-satire of bourgeois family life, a girl is suddenly able to see everything her messed-up parents are up to

Here is a high-concept satire of bourgeois family life with all its secrets and lies from German film-maker Frédéric Hambalek; it is something to remind you of the notorious Babel fish in Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which you can put in your ear and then comprehend what any creature in the universe is saying — a miraculous promotion of pure understanding which has been the cause of more and bloodier wars than anything else.

Marielle (Laeni Geiseler) is a moody and withdrawn teenager with messed-up parents. Her mum is Julia and dad is Tobias (Felix Kramer). Julia is on the verge of a furtive affair with work colleague Max (Mehmet Ateşçi) while Tobias is being turned into a beta-male joke at his publishing company – his...

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...

Twenty-nine film projects have been selected for the seventh edition of European Work in Progress Cologne (Ewip), the pitching event held from October 14-16.

Among the titles being pitched to an international audience of sales agents, distributors and festival programmers is Bulgarian filmmaker Stephan Komendarev’s seventh feature Made In EU, about a provincial town turning against a seamstress after it appears she is the first local to have contracted Covid.

Other projects include German director Frédéric Halambek’s second feature Marielle, starring child actor Laeni Geiseler as a girl with the telepathic ability to know what her parents are...