News

Love Like This Before: Sims-Fewer & Mancinelli Examine the Ethics of Love

Canadian filmmaking duo Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli follow up their disturbing 2020 relationship drama Violation (read review) with a more extravagant genre mixture in Honey Bunch, which careens from complex subtexts to full blown B-movie tropes. While not as archly unembellished as their previous venture, a moody intrigue saturates this genre exercise about a young woman suffering from amnesia who undergoes an experimental treatment at an isolated therapeutic facility to recover both her memory of and emotional capacity for her husband. A picture perfect scenario of the doting spouse quickly fades into what appears to be a sinister gaslighting exercise, where a startling ambiguity regarding the complicity of the program’s facilitators also plays a role cementing heteronormative patterns its female clients were subconsciously subverting through their own emotional agency.…...

Romance for indie filmmakers Dusty Mancinelli and Madeleine Sims-Fewer blossomed in the most unexpected of places — as they shot their 2020 debut feature Violation, a relentlessly violent and gory revenge drama set in cottage-country Canada.

“After making our first film, which really dealt with trauma and was very dark, very painful to make and really delved into the dark recesses of our minds, we wanted to make something that was about love,” Sims-Fewer tells The Hollywood Reporter ahead of Honey Bunch, their sophomore feature, having its world premiere in Berlin on Feb. 18.

In their first feature, which bowed at the Toronto Film Festival, Sims-Fewer played a young woman in an unhappy marriage who, with her sister and their husbands, stays at a secluded cottage where unspoken traumas and upsetting sexual violence are gradually revealed.

But on Honey Bunch, the Canadian filmmakers deliberately toned down the dark, bloody material of their first feature.

Feminist body horror is taking over indie cinema.

The female filmmakers behind this new wave of flesh and flash are finding critical and commercial success by combining the viscerally grotesque with progressive themes exploring bodily autonomy, beauty standards, and social expectations for women.

Coralie Fargeat’s indie blockbuster The Substance — which has earned $77 million worldwide and picked up 5 Oscar nominations — is the current queen of female body horror, but gross-out feminist films are everywhere. Sundance’s Midnight screenings this year included Emilie Blichfeldt’s The Ugly Stepsister — a twisted take on the Cinderella story involving bone-crunching cosmetic surgery and bodily mutilation — and Grace Glowicki’s Dead Lover, a horror comedy about a gravedigger (Glowicki) who goes to macabre lengths in an attempt to re-animate her deceased mate.

Berlin’s lineup features Johanna Moder’s Mother’s Baby, a German-language psychological horror movie about a woman unsure if the baby she’s...

The competition line-up for the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival is being announced at a press conference at 11am Cet (10am GMT).

Scroll down for line-up

New festival director Tricia Tuttle is revealing the titles for the Competition and new Perspectives strand alongside co-directors of film programming Jacqueline Lyanga and Michael Stütz.

The announcement is being live-streamed on the festival’s social channels. Watch it live above.

Screen will update this page with the titles as they are announced. Refresh the page for latest updates.

As previously announced, the festival will open with Tom Tykwer’s Special Gala out of competition selection The Light.

Ahead of the Berlinale 2025 taking place February 13-23, they’ve unveiled their lineups for Berlinale Special, Panorama, Generation and Forum sections. Highlights include confirmation of Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17 alongside Ira Sachs’ Peter Hujar’s Day, Ancestral Visions of the Future from This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection director Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, a documentary on the making of Shoah, a new Jacob Elordi-led series from Justin Kurzel, and more.

See the lineup below via Deadline and check back for the competition lineup next week.

Berlinale Special

Ancestral Visions of the Future

by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese | with Siphiwe Nzima, Sobo Bernard, Zaman Mathejane, Mochesane Edwin Kotsoane, Rehauhetsoe Ernest Kotsoane

France / Lesotho / Germany / Saudi Arabia 2025

Berlinale Special | World premiere | Documentary form

A poetic allegory of the filmmaker Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese’s childhood, an ode to cinema and an inner nod to his mother. Through fragmented narratives and mythic imagery,...

Aussie filmmaker Justin Kurzel’s series adaptation of Richard Flanagan’s Booker Prize-winning novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North, starring Jacob Elordi, will screen at this year’s Berlin Film Festival.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North was among several titles added to Berlin’s lineup this morning.

The festival describes the series as a “riveting new Australian drama” about a WWII hero haunted by his past. The show will screen as a Berlinale Special Gala. Also in Specials strand is The Thing with Feathers starring Benedict Cumberbatch. The pic screens at Berlin following a debut bow at Sundance and is from filmmaker Dylan Southern. The pic is an adaption of Max Porter’s novel about a grieving father wrestling with the sudden death of his wife while also raising their young children. As previously reported, Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17 will also screen. Scroll down...

The Berlin International Film Festival has unveiled the first wave of titles for its 75th edition, including features in its Panorama, Berlinale Special and Generation strands.

An initial 12 titles have been revealed for Panorama, of which eight are world premieres. These include Paul, a documentary by Canadian filmmaker Denis Cote, who has played in competition at Berlin four times with titles including Vic + Flo Saw A Bear and That Kind Of Summer. His latest follows a man struggling with social anxiety who finds refuge in serving women who invite him to clean their homes.

Scroll down for full list of...

The Berlin Film Festival forges a new path next year with the first year under new artistic director Tricia Tuttle, who succeeds Carlo Chatrian and brings a background as a journalist and curator to the annual German showcase. This year’s festival runs February 13-23, and also in new positions this year are Jacqueline Lyanga and Michael Stütz, both serving as co-directors of programming.

With bigger announcements to come, the Berlinale unveiled its first wave of titles across the Panorama and Berlinale Special gala lineups on Tuesday. As previously announced, Tom Tykwer’s “The Light” is opening this coming 75th edition. Filmmakers getting a boost from today’s announcement include Denis Côté, Michel Gondry, and Ira Sachs, all bringing new films to the festival.

In the Berlinale Special lineup, German director Jan-Ole Gerster debuts the neo-noir thriller “Islands,” starring Sam Riley and Stacy Martin. Per the festival synopsis, in the film,...

Michel Gondry and Ira Sachs are among the headline filmmakers set to debut new feature works within the sidebar competitions at next year’s Berlin Film Festival.

The German festival announced the pair this afternoon as part of its first crop of confirmed titles.

Gondry will screen Maya, Give Me a Title in Berlin’s Generation sidebar. The festival’s website describes the film as Gondry’s “stop-motion love letter to his daughter Maya brings to life a poetic and amusing journey that invites you to dream and laugh.”

Also set for the Generation competition is Our Wildest Days (I Agries Meres Mas) by Greek filmmaker Vasilis Kekatos who is best known for his 2019 short film The Distance Between Us and the Sky, which won the Short Film Palme d’Or at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. He also created the popular Greek series Milky Way.

Related:...

The Belin Film Festival has unveiled its Panorama lineup, including new works by Denis Côté, Ira Sachs, Michel Gondry and Shatara Michelle Ford, among others.

Sachs’ movie, “Peter Hujar’s Day,” stars Ben Wishaw and Rebecca Hall. Set for an international premiere in Berlin, the film portrays a 1974 conversation between photographer Peter Hujar and his friend Linda Rosenkrantz, set against the backdrop of the New York art scene of the time.

Côté’s film, “Paul,” is a documentary about a man struggling with depression and social anxiety who found refuge in serving women who invite him to clean their homes.

Gondry’s “Maya, Give Me a Title” is described by the festival as a “stop-motion love letter to his daughter Maya brings to life a poetic and amusing journey that invites you to dream and laugh.” It features the voice of “The Count of Monte-Cristo” star Pierre Niney.

Ford’s “Dreams in Nightmares,...

John Magaro, Kate Dickie and Jason Isaacs will be heading to the chilly streets of Berlin. The Berlin Film Festival unveiled the first gala screenings for its 2025 edition, which runs Feb. 13-23.

Islands, the new feature from German director Jan-Ole Gerster (Lara, A Coffee in Berlin), is among the gala highlights. The thriller stars British actor Sam Riley (Control, Maleficent) as a once-promising tennis professional now working as a tennis coach for holidaymakers on a resort island, filling his time with alcohol and brief affairs. Stacy Martin, Jack Farthing, and Dylan Torrell co-star.

Köln 75 from director Ido Fluk, follows the true story of Vera Brandes, teenage patron saint of the 1970s Cologne music scene, who risked everything to organize Keith Jarrett’s legendary Köln Concert, considered by many to be the greatest solo concert in music history. German actress Mala Emde play Fluk with John Magaro, Michael Chernus and Alexander Scheer co-starring.

The Forrest Gump soundtrack features iconic songs from a wide variety of music artists, including Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, and Creedence Clearwater Revival. The movie chronicles the life of the title character, a warm-hearted man from Alabama who takes a tour of 20th-century American history. Throughout his travels, he fights in the Vietnam War, meets a handful of U.S. presidents, invests in Apple on the ground level, and exposes the Watergate scandal. Along the way, Forrest Gump uses needle drops on its soundtrack to reflect the changing times.

Some songs on the Forrest Gump soundtrack are used to establish the period setting, like Jimi Hendrix and Buffalo Springfield underscoring scenes of the Vietnam War, while others are more integral to the plot, such as when Elvis sings one of his biggest hits to show off the dance moves he learned from Forrest. The soundtrack of Forrest Gump was a...