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Gabriel Mascaro’s The Blue Trail has taken the lead on Screen’s Berlin jury grid with a strong 3.4 while Ari, Dreams, The Ice Tower and Reflection In A Dead Diamond also land.

The Blue Trailreceived four four stars (excellent) and five three stars (good), already beating the score of last year’s joint winners My Favourite Cake and The Devil’s Bath with 3.1.Denise Weinberg stars in the dystopian fable as a 77-year-old who embarks on a journey through the Amazon.

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

Close behind was Michel Franco’s...

Starry sessions with Robert Pattinson and Jacob Elordi enlivened the Berlin Film Festival Saturday as the actors made waves with high-profile new titles “Mickey 17” and “The Narrow Road to the Deep North.”

Saturday’s premiere of sci-fi adventure film “Mickey 17” was one of the biggest events of the Berlinale so far, as all eyes in the film biz have been on director Bong Joon Ho and his followup to the Oscar-winning 2019 drama “Parasite.” Variety‘s Ramin Setoodeh and Elsa Keslassy captured the buzz in the room as Berlin fest director Tricia Tuttle had to cut the standing ovation short in order to bring the director and star on stage for a Q&a.

“Pattinson, who attended the premiere giving off Batman vibes (in an all-black ensemble that included a leather coat), arrived early in the night — signing autographs and taking many selfies on his way inside the theater.

Léonor Serraille has had a career most young directors would dream of — winning the Camera d’Or for her 2017 debut “Montparnasse Bienvenue” before launching her sophomore feature, “Mother and Son,” from Cannes’ competition in 2022. And for just as long, the thirty-something auteur has kept a healthy distance from her own high profile, keeping off social media and living outside of Paris, while often playing cagey about her success.

“For years, I never even told people that I worked in cinema,” Serraille says. “I like being incognito, and I like being a part of a crowd. [To do this job] you can’t look at others from above; you have to remain at eye level, and you have to blend in.”

Those instincts are on stark display in Serraille’s Golden Bear contender, “Ari.” Shot on Super 16 film stock and styled to accent raw emotion, bereft of makeup or vanity, the director’s latest project...

Huo Meng’s Living The Land and Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s Hot Milkkick off Screen’s Berlinale 2025 critics jury grid with average scores of 2.4 (with two scores incoming) and 1.8 respectively.

Both family-centred dramas, Meng’s fiction debut is set in 1990s China and told through the eyes of a 10-year-old boy while Lenkiewicz’s UK-produced feature follows a daughter and her ill mother who travel to a Spanish seaside town in hope of a cure.

Nine critics are participating in this year’s jury grid and will mark all 19 films playing in competition.

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

Billie Eilish interviewed Ariana Grande last night after a screening of Wicked at the Directors Guild of America’s theater in Los Angeles. The Q&a, held for Academy and guild members, saw the singers sharing their mutual fandom.

“My team was like: Who would be a cool person to do this? Who’s your dream person?” Grande explaining of the pairing (via Variety). “I was like, Billie, [but] she’s not gonna say yes. She’s too busy. She’s too fabulous. It’s too much. But she said yes,...

Leonor Serraille’s “Ari,” one of the most anticipated European films slated to world premiere in competition at the Berlin Film Festival, has been boarded by Pamela Leu’s Be For Films.

“Ari” marks Serraille’s follow up to “Mother and Son” (“Un petit frere”) which competed at Cannes in 2022. Her feature debut, “Jeune Femme,” won the Golden Camera at Cannes in 2017.

Be For Films will kick off sales on the film at the European Film Market running alongside the Berlinale.

Serraille’s third feature, “Ari” revolves around a 27-year-old student teacher who collapses right in the middle of a school inspector’s visit. “Angry with him for being a failure, his father kicks him out of the house. Emotionally raw, and alone in the city, Ari reluctantly forces himself to rekindle his relationships with old friends. As his memories of the previous months successively ebb and flow, Ari discovers...