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Matías Piñeiro’s new, hour-long film, “You Burn Me,” is a dazzling, mind-bogglingly rich, intertextual hall of mirrors. Relying on Sea Foam, a chapter from Cesare Pavese’s Dialogues with Leucò and Sappho’s poetry, it skitters off into a provocative meditation on the ellipsis in translation between the page and screen, as well as summoning the viewer’s sustained engagement. For all its preoccupations with death, this is a lively film, restlessly pushing against boundaries. It can be overwhelming and demands multiple revisits for you to fully appraise the massive scope of what Piñeiro is proposing.

The film recently had its US theatrical run via Cinema Guild. HighOnFilms’ Debanjan Dhar sat down with Piñeiro to discuss the art of detours, his abiding interest in variations, weaving incomplete narratives, resisting totemic representations, and more.

Debanjan: This film is full of offshoots, diversions, and detours, there’s this constant branching...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Roxy Cinema

Martin Scorsese has programmed Living, Breathing New York, which starts with Shadows and a 35mm print of Heaven Knows What on Sunday; The Rubber Gun (watch our exclusive trailer debut) plays Saturday with a Stephen Lack Q&a; Blue Velvet, Lost Highway, and Wild at Heart screen.

Anthology Film Archives

Robina Rose’s Nightshift (watch our exclusive trailer debut) begins playing in a new restoration; Matías Piñeiro-curated series offers Antonioni, Hollis Frampton, and Straub-Huillet.

Film Forum

Luis Buñuel’s Él begins screening in a 4K restoration; Lou Ye’s Suzhou River and Spring Fever screen; Play It As It Lays and Godard’s A Woman Is a Woman continue; Space Jam screens on Sunday.

IFC Center

Hideaki Anno’s Love & Pop plays in a new restoration; eXistenZ, Mulholland Dr., Paprika, Best in Show, Palindromes, and Pink Flamingos show late.

In You Burn Me, the Argentinian littérateur-filmmaker Matías Piñeiro uses his vintage Bolex camera like the iOS Notes app. Shooting over the course of a few years, his method involved “collecting” images here and there amidst teaching jobs on two continents, and in real locations referenced in the texts he’s adapting, as well as places imitating them. Whilst his work has always contended with classical literary texts’ relevance in the present day, his latest meditates more urgently on film form, specifically how the 16mm-shot and co-op-made ’60s avant-garde canon can be modernized. Like Sappho’s Ancient Greek poetry––his other principal concern here––his rushes need to be represented as countless, gleaming fragments, with a sprawling file database subbing for the poet’s parchment.

All of which is to say there’s a productive tension when Piñeiro attempts to fashion his literary sources into cinema: never just acted-out physically or maintained through voice-over,...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research

My screening series Amnesiascope hosts the La Clef Revival Collective for a screening of Bye Bye Tiberias this Sunday.

Spectacle

Meanwhile, La Clef presents Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche’s Dernier Maquis on Saturday.

Anthology Film Archives

A Volker Spengler retrospective brings three films by Fassbinder while a Matías Piñeiro-curated series offers Antonioni and Straub-Huillet.

Nitehawk Cinema

A secret Hong Kong film plays on 35mm Sunday afternoon.

Museum of the Moving Image

Snubbed Forever concludes with The Lady from Shanghai and Vertigo.

IFC Center

Hideaki Anno’s Love & Pop plays in a new restoration; eXistenZ, Mulholland Dr., Paprika, Dogra Magra, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas show late.

Roxy Cinema

Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart screen.

Film Forum

Play It As It Lays begins a week-long run; Godard’s A Woman Is a Woman continues...

“Focus the text” commands a translation app pop-up at the mid-point of Matías Piñeiro’s new experimental essay film You Burn Me. It’s a mantra that the Argentinian filmmaker has taken to heart. Using Sea Foam, a chapter from Cesare Pavese’s book Dialogues with Leucò, as a creative catalyst, Piñeiro envisions audiovisual dialogues between characters (Sappho and Britomartis), between actresses (María Villar and Gabriela Saidón), between filmmaker and text. As pertinent pages and mnemonic games unfold, repeat, and recontextualize, the spectatorial thrill of Godard’s Goodbye to Language comes to mind. This a formally bold, playful, reinvigorating work––a love letter to language both verbal and visual.

After a warmly received North American premiere at last year’s New York Film Festival, You Burn Me opens in the U.S. in limited theatrical release this week from Cinema Guild. I first saw the film last June, when it had a U.

Argentine writer-director Matías Piñeiro’s You Burn Me is an intimate, impressionistic adaptation of the “Sea Foam” section from Italian modernist poet Cesare Pavese’s Dialogues with Leucò. It’s one of several segments from Pavese’s 1947 book that stages a philosophical dialogue between figures of Greek mythology.

“Sea Form” specifically imagines a conversation between Sappho (Gabriela Saidón), the lyric poet of Lesbos, and the mountain nymph Britomartis (María Villar). They have much to discuss, both having thrown themselves into the sea—the former out of unrequited desire for the ferryman Phaon, the latter to escape the unwanted attentions of Minos. Splicing in a handful of Sappho’s surviving fragmentary poems and a parallel story that follows a lovestruck biology student (Maria Inês Conçalves), Piñeiro expands Pavese’s dialogue into an intertextual conversation on the nature of love and desire, death and memory, silence and expression.

Poetry, not a fundamentally narrative medium,...

Following Hermia & Helena and Isabella, Matías Piñeiro’s new film You Burn Me playfully, gorgeously adapts “Sea Foam,” a chapter in Cesare Pavese’s Dialogues with Leucò. Centered around fictional dialogue between the ancient Greek poet Sappho and the nymph Britomartis, Piñeiro’s latest is a feat of effervescent poetic beauty, melding poignant words with stunning images to a dizzying, transcendent effect. With the Berlinale and NYFF selection picked up by Cinema Guild for a release beginning next week, we’re pleased to exclusively debut the first trailer.

You Burn Me will open on Friday, March 7 at New York’s Anthology Film Archives, accompanied by a special series curated by Matías himself, including works by Michelangelo Antonioni, Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub, Mariano Llinas, and more. For those in Los Angeles, don’t miss the LA premiere on March 15 at American Cinematheque as part of a series featuring films by the director.

Amongst the debut features populating Berlinale’s new section called Perspectives, none presented so admirably fresh take on fiction and political histories as Two Times João Liberada. The Portuguese hidden gem is directed by Paula Tomás Marques, who has made a few captivating shorts and also worked as a cinematographer on others’ films (including Matiás Piñeiro’s You Burn Me) as well as being an editor and script supervisor. Given her all-round involvement with independent production, it’s little surprise her full-length debut is a film about the making of a film. In the Lisbon-set João Liberada, an actress named João is cast to play a namesake of hers in a micro-budget period film.

Even if we spend all our screen time with João the actress, it’s João Liberada who is the film’s actual protagonist. With the twin name being a supposed coincidence, the (male) director of the...

On the heels of its premiere in competition at the Berlin Film Festival, Hong Sang-soo’s “What Does That Nature Say to You” has found U.S. distribution with Cinema Guild.

The movie marks the prolific South Korean director’s 33rd movie and follows an impressive streak of six consecutive years at the Berlinale.

Cinema Guild, which recently collaborated with Hong on his previous film “A Traveler’s Needs,” will release “What Does That Nature Say to You” in theaters in the U.S. later this year. Produced by Jeonwonsa Film, the fim is represented internationally by Finecut.

“What Does That Nature Say to You” follows Donghwa (Ha Seongguk), a fledgling poet in his thirties who rejects material aspirations and seeks to lead a life dedicated to truth and beauty. On a lazy afternoon, he drives his girlfriend, Junhee (Kang Soyi), back to her parents’ home outside Seoul. In the driveway,...

Can anyone forget the transfixing mysteries of Lois Patiño’s 2023 film, “Samsara”? The director is back with a new feature, “Ariel,” which recently premiered at the Rotterdam Film Festival in the Harbour section. The film is a disarmingly playful, free-wheeling strum on representation and reality. It’s lit by a spirit of surreal mischief, as Agustina Muñoz playing herself travels to an island for a production of “The Tempest,” where everyone is locked in a sort of Shakespeare-mania.

HighOnFilms’ Debanjan Dhar caught up with Patiño to discuss Ariel’s metatextual riffs, collaborations with Matías Piñeiro and Ion De Sosa, and bringing Shakespeare into the fold of everyday in the Azores. Edited excerpts from the conversation:

Debanjan: Could you speak about creating the conceit of the ferry where somewhere midway all passengers except Ariel fall into deep sleep? When did that conceit, as the first entry point into that strange,...

A few years back, directors Lois Patiño and Matías Piñeiro joined forces for what was meant to be a very loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The resulting short, Sycorax, felt like the meeting of two kindred spirits. Piñeiro’s ability to resuscitate the Bard’s texts and graft them onto present-day settings met with Patiño’s keen eye for the otherworldly. The story of a fictional cineaste (Piñeiro regular Agustina Muñoz) who roams the Azores in search of a woman to play the eponymous witch from The Tempest, Sycorax oozed both the playfulness of Piñeiro’s “Shakespeareads” and the sensual, hypnotic aura of Patiño’s Red Moon Tide or Samsara. It was that rare joint project whose two directors worked in perfect symbiosis, each playing to the other’s strengths.

Based on an original idea by Piñeiro and Patiño, through written and directed by the latter only, Ariel...

Cinema Tropical, the premier presenter of Latin American cinema in the United States, has announced its annual list of the Best Latin American and U.S. Latinx Films of 2024. This year’s prestigious selection showcases 32 exceptional films—26 from across Latin America and six from U.S. Latinx filmmakers—representing a vibrant spectrum of contemporary storytelling. These films will compete for the 15th Annual Cinema Tropical Awards, with winners to be revealed on January 14, 2025, at a ceremony at Film at Lincoln Center in New York City.

The selected films span diverse genres, themes, and countries, highlighting the creative and cultural richness of Latin American cinema. Festival favorites such as La Cocina by Alonso Ruizpalacios, The Delinquents by Rodrigo Moreno, Pepe by Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias, and Sujo by Fernanda Valadez and Astrid Rondero are among the contenders for top honors. The winners will be recognized in categories including Best Film,...

You Burn Me.That we can be here…and still find things to call beautiful and to love or to be unable to stop loving is indefensible. But we are here, and we do. —Anahid Nersessian, Keats’s Odes: A Lover’s DiscourseOceanic waters are “drenched in sperm and tears” as “Sea Foam”—one of 27 pensive, playful texts in Cesare Pavese’s Dialogues with Leuco (1947)—begins. How boring, remarks Sappho to a nearby nymph. Both Britomartis and Sappho threw themselves into these salty, sticky waves out of desperation—to escape lecherous men, to obliterate a broken heart—and the poet, for her part, is disappointed. She longed after a sea that would swallow, that would annul. She longed for death. Swimming through the fluids of desire and despair forever was not at all what she had in mind. Cheer up, urges Britomartis. Becoming “a curl of frothing wave” is a fine fate.

Gone are the days when cinephiles could just expect “Cannes on the Hudson” from the New York Film Festival. In his fifth year since assuming leadership of the selection committee from Kent Jones, artistic director Dennis Lim continues to bring both vitality and variety to the festival. If there’s a near-constant among the changes, it’s Hong Sang-soo having two movies in the main slate. (This year it’s By the Stream and A Traveler’s Needs.)

Elder statesmen like David Cronenberg, Mike Leigh, and Paul Schrader return with their latest films. But this 62nd edition of the festival, which runs from September 27 to October 24, doesn’t belong to the veterans. If any streak runs through the main slate, it’s the prominence of second features, including RaMell Ross’s Nickel Boys (this year’s opening-night selection), Dea Kulumbegashvili’s April, and Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light.

New York Film Festival parent Film at Lincoln Center has set the slate for its Currents strand at the 62nd edition – 12 features and 28 shorts meant to complement the Main Slate with an emphasis on new, innovative voices.

Currents’ Centerpiece selection is the world premiere of Jem Cohen’s Little, Big, and Far, a tale of catastrophes through the travels of an astronomer in search of a sky dark enough to study the stars.

Other portraits include Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich’s The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire, a fragmented recomposition of the Martiniquan writer and activist’s legacy; Pierre Creton and Vincent Barré’s 7 Walks With Mark Brown, following the path of a paleobotanist in search of native plants; Yashaddai Owens’s debut feature, Jimmy, which imagines a young James Baldwin as he arrives in Paris from New York; and Lilith Kraxner and Milena Czernovsky’s bluish (winner of the Grand Prix at...

Following the Main Slate and Spotlight sections, the 62nd New York Film Festival, taking place September 27-October 14 at Lincoln Center and venues across NYC, has unveiled its Currents section. The Currents slate includes 12 feature films and 28 short films in six programs, representing more than 20 countries, and complements the Main Slate, tracing a more complete picture of contemporary cinema with an emphasis on new and innovative forms and voices. The section presents a diverse offering of productions by filmmakers and artists working at the vanguard of the medium.

Highlights include the 14-hour exergue – on documenta 14, Matthew Rankin’s Universal Language, Matías Piñeiro’s You Burn Me, Guillaume Cailleau and Ben Russell’s Direct Action, the world premiere of Jem Cohen’s Little Big, and Far, Yashaddai Owens’ James Baldwin film Jimmy, Pierre Creton and Vincent Barré’s 7 Walks with Mark Brown, Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich’s The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire, Lilith Kraxner,...

Argentine director Matías Piñeiro has long been intrigued by the challenge of adapting literary works for the screen. In his latest film You Burn Me, he finds inspiration in the sparse yet evocative fragments of poetry left to us from ancient Greek lyrical poet Sappho.

Living in the 7th century BC on the island of Lesbos, Sappho wrote verses infused with longing, often focused on themes of love, desire and relationships between women. While the majority of her original writings are lost to time, they cement her place among history’s most significant poets.

Piñeiro’s film grapples with Sappho’s legacy, using her surviving words as a starting point to meditate on life’s biggest mysteries. At the core of You Burn Me is a chapter from Italian author Cesare Pavese’s 1947 book Dialogues with Leucò.

It imagines a conversation between Sappho and the nymph Britomartis atop restless ocean waves,...

Cinema Guild has secured U.S. distribution rights for “Matt and Mara,” directed by Kazik Radwanski and starring Deragh Campbell and Matt Johnson.

The film debuted in the Encounters section at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year and closed the Jeonju International Film Festival in May.

The narrative follows Mara (Campbell), a creative writing professor, whose life takes an unexpected turn when she reconnects with Matt (Johnson), an author from her past. As their relationship develops, Mara navigates the complexities of her strained marriage to an experimental musician. When her husband unexpectedly cancels plans to drive Mara to a conference out of town, Matt accompanies her instead and the pressure in their undefined relationship slowly builds.

Campbell and Johnson reunite for the film after their roles in Radwanski’s “Anne at 13,000 ft.”

The deal was brokered by Cinema Guild president Peter Kelly and the film’s producers, Medium Density Fibreboard Films.

Sony is rolling out Bad Boys: Ride Or Die at 643 locations to make it the widest release in the UK and Ireland this weekend.

Will Smith and Martin Lawrence reprise their roles as two renegade cops standing in the way of a Miami drugs cartel, with Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah directing.

It is the fourth installment in the Bad Boys franchise following the most recent, Bad Boys For Life, opening to £3.8m in January 2020, surpassing the £866,215 opening of 1995’s Bad Boys and the £3.2m of 2003’s Bad Boys II.

The Watched, known outside of UK-Ireland as The Watchers,...

Lois Patiño, one of the leading lights of the New Galician Cinema in Spain, is putting the final touches to “Ariel,” the highly anticipated follow up to his critically-acclaimed feature ”Samsara” which has secured distribution in more than a dozen territories and won a Special Jury Prize at the Berlinale Encounters 2023.

A contemporary and playful reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” from the perspective of the character Ariel, the feature, produced by Spain’s Filmika Galaika with Portugal’s Bando à Parte, will be sneak-peeked for the first time ever at the inaugural Ecam Forum co-production market, set to run June 10-14 in Madrid.

Producer Beli Martínez said more than 80% of the financing is locked via broadcasting partners Rtp in Portugal, Tvg in Galicia, Spain, public funders Agadic in Galicia and Spanish federal agency Icaa and Turismo de Portugal.

At Ecam Forum, she will be looking for post-production financing, distribution and sales.

This hour-long reverie from Argentinian film-maker Matías Piñeiro offers chilling insight into the agonies of unrequited love

The three words “you burn me” are a surviving fragment (or micro-poem) by Sappho, and make up the title of this hour-long reverie from the Argentinian film-maker Matías Piñeiro, a multilayered essay or dramatised exchange musing on the nature of death, desire and love. It is, in fact, an adaptation of the chapter Sea Foam from the Italian author Cesare Pavese’s 1947 volume Dialogues With Leucò, which imagines conversations between mythic figures.

This film shows us a dialogue between Sappho (supposed by unreliable romantic myth to have thrown herself into the Ionian sea in the anguish of heartbreak) and the goddess Britomartis, who is imagined to have plunged into the water to escape the pursuit of a man. So they are the exact opposites: in them desire runs in opposite directions. The movie...

The Jeonju International Film Festival, South Korea’s second most important generalist film festival, on Tuesday announced “The Major Tones” and “Time to Be Strong” as the Grand Prix winners of its two competition sections. The festival continues until Friday.

Directed by Argentina’s Ingrid Pokropek, “The Major Tones” is a mystery film about a youngster with a metal plate in her arm which begins to receive peculiar messages in Morse Code. It premiered at the Mar del Plata festival and also played in Berlin’s Generation KPlus section. In Jeonju it won the international section.

The Korean section was dominated by “Time to Be Strong,” the sophomore effort of director Namkoong Sun. In addition to the Korean competition’s Grand Prix, it also shared the best actor award and picked up the Watch award from a local streamer.

The film follows three former K-pop idol singers whose careers have...

New York-based Argentinian director Matiás Piñeiro’s work is without a doubt, a celebration of intertextuality. After continuously exploring the female roles in Shakespeare’s comedies from 2011’s Rosalinda up until 2020’s Isabella, he was drawn to a text which seemed impenetrable, admitting he had no clue how to film a poetic dialogue. In order to collect the shots for the adaptation-film-collage that would become You Burn Me, the filmmaker traveled between New York and San Sebastian, which gave him the possibility to “develop the material, watch it and think […]

The post A Film To Read: Matiás Piñeiro, Tomas Paula Marques and Gabi Saidón on You Burn Me first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

New York-based Argentinian director Matiás Piñeiro’s work is without a doubt, a celebration of intertextuality. After continuously exploring the female roles in Shakespeare’s comedies from 2011’s Rosalinda up until 2020’s Isabella, he was drawn to a text which seemed impenetrable, admitting he had no clue how to film a poetic dialogue. In order to collect the shots for the adaptation-film-collage that would become You Burn Me, the filmmaker traveled between New York and San Sebastian, which gave him the possibility to “develop the material, watch it and think […]

The post A Film To Read: Matiás Piñeiro, Tomas Paula Marques and Gabi Saidón on You Burn Me first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Cinema Guild has acquired North American distribution rights for “You Burn Me” (aka “Tú me abrasas”), directed by Argentina’s Matías Piñeiro.

The film had its world premiere at the Berlinale in February in the festival’s Encounters section. It won a special mention from the jury at Paris’s Cinéma du réel in March.

Cinema Guild will release the film in theaters following its currently unspecified North American festival premiere later this year. The company has also acquired rights to three earlies films by Piñeiro – “The Stolen Man” from 2007; “They All Lie” from 2009; and “Rosalinda” which will be released on home video and digital alongside “You Burn Me.”

An adaptation of “Sea Foam,” a chapter in Cesare Pavese’s Dialogues with Leucò, Piñeiro’s latest is an intimate and expansive meditation on death and desire. It is also a challenging exploration of the possibilities of adapting text to film.

Argentinian filmmakers are uniting under the banner Cine Argentino Unido to gather in Berlin on Tuesday to raise awareness of the unfolding public funding crisis in the country.

National film and TV institute Incaa, which funds most of the country’s local productions, has been unable to allocate money since Nicolas Batlle resigned as head last December in protest over the election of far-right president Javier Milei.

Milei has promised a programme of deep cuts to help fix the country’s ravaged economy and the industry fears cultural funding is high up his list.

“The far-right government is attempting to...

It may not match last year’s sheer quantity in competition strands, but Spain still boasts a high quality presence at the Berlinale. Following, highlights the festival and EFM:

“Every You Every Me,” (Michael Fetter Nathansky)

A factory worker strives to reconnect with her distant husband, exploring the rediscovery of love within the complexities of relationships. From Contando Films, Studio Zentral, Network Movie and Nephilim, a German-Spanish production.

“Cura Sana,” (Lucía G. Romero)

Produced by Escac Films, this Generation 14plus premiere delves into sisters’ lives shaped by ancestral violence, exploring deep familial bonds and lasting impact of abuse.

“Deprisa, Deprisa,” (Carlos Saura)

A classic: Set to a memorable flamenco-pop score, four young Madrid delinquents pull robberies, snort heroin, steal cars the film capturing the raw energy youth and their vague, but visceral sense of ‘liberty.’ A restoration of a seminal work.

“The Human Hibernation,” (Anna Cornudella)

A sci-fi exploration of siblings undergoing hibernation,...

Cine Argentino Unido, the new coalition group representing Argentinian film organisations, has called for a show of solidarity in Berlin amid an arts funding crisis in the South American country.

On Thursday the group issued a statement in which it hailed Argentina’s artistic presence in the Berlinale this year.

“What should be a source of pride for our entire industry, however, comes in a context of alarm and emergency for the cinema and culture of our country,” the statement said, in reference to firebrand president Javier Milei’s efforts to course-correct a stricken economy buckling under hyperinflation, huge debt,...

A Different Man.The Berlinale have begun to announce the first few titles selected for the 74th edition of their festival, set to take place from February 15 through 21, 2024. This page will be updated as further sections are announced.COMPETITIONAnother End (Piero Messina)Architecton (Victor Kossakovsky)Black Tea (Abderrahmane Sissako)La Cocina (Alonso Ruiz Palacios) Dahomey (Mati Diop)A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg)The Empire (Bruno Dumont)Gloria! (Margherita Vicario)Suspended Time (Olivier Assayas)From Hilde, With Love (Andreas Dresen)My Favourite CakeLangue Etrangère (Claire Berger)Small Things Like These (Tim Mielants)Who Do I Belong To (Meryam Joobeur)Pepe (Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias)Shambhala (Min Bahadur Bham)Sterben (Matthias Glasner)Small Things Like These (Tim Mielants)A Traveler’s Needs (Hong Sang-soo)Sleep With Your Eyes Open. ENCOUNTERSArcadia (Yorgos Zois)Cidade; Campo (Juliana Rojas)Demba (Mamadou Dia)Direct ActionSleep With Your Eyes Open (Nele Wohlatz)The Fable (Raam Reddy...

Berlinale co-directors Carlo Chatrian and Mariette Rissenbeek are going out with a bang in their final year, with a lineup unveiled today featuring the latest works by Olivier Assayas, Bruno Dumont, Mati Diop, Hong Sang-soo, Abderrahmane Sissako, Jane Schoenbrun, Alonso Ruizpalacios, Matias Pineiro, Travis Wilkerson, Kazik Radwanski, Annie Baker, and more.

When the co-directors were asked by Screen Daily about their departure, Chatrian said, “It’s quite simple. Mariette and I had a mandate of five years. It is true that at the beginning I said that I was willing to go on because there was a shared will with the [German] Ministry [of Culture] to go on. But then the people who have the responsibility to see the future of the Berlinale thought this structure of two leaders was not the right one and I don’t consider myself able to run the festival alone. And that was the decision of the Ministry.

The 74th Berlin International Film Festival has revealed the 20 titles selected for its official Competition as well as its competitive Encounters strand.

Scroll down for full list

New films from Claire Burger, Olivier Assayas, Hong Sangsoo, Bruno Dumont, Abderrahmane Sissako and Mati Diop are among those selected for the Competition lineup, with stars including Rooney Mara, Gael Garcia Bernal, Sebastian Stan and Cillian Murphy, who leads the festival’s opening film Small Things Like These.

Festival heads Carlo Chatrian and Mariette Rissenbeek unveiled the selections at the House of World Cultures in Berlin today (January 22).

The 2024 Berlinale will run February...

The Competition line-up for the 74th Berlin International Film Festival will be announced today at a press conference at 11am Cet (10am GMT).

Scroll down for line-up

Co-directors Carlo Chatrian and Mariette Rissenbeek will reveal the titles for the Competition and Encounters sections at the House of World Cultures in Berlin.

The announcement will also be live-streamed on the festival’s homepage and social channels. Watch it live above.

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

As previously announced, the festival will open with the world premiere of...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.The Deep Blue Sea.REMEMBERINGTerence Davies has died, aged 77. Michael Koresky, who wrote a monograph on Davies in 2014, penned a beautiful Sight & Sound obituary, in which he wrote that “no one made movies like Davies, who precisely sculpted out of a subjective past, creating films that glided on waves of contemplation and observation, inviting viewers to join him in the burnished darkness of a past about which he felt complex, contradictory feelings.” Last year, Dan Schindel wrote for Notebook about the role of poetry in Benediction (2022), and in 2012, Michael Guillen interviewed Davies about The Deep Blue Sea (2011). "The problem with film is that it's always in the eternal present,” says Davies. “But it's closest, I think, to music. You don't have to be a musician to follow a symphonic argument. If you love the music,...

You’re plenty absolved for not knowing the deal. It’s been 30 years since Martín Rejtman’s debut feature (Rapado), almost 10 from his last (Two Shots Fired), and nearly everything he’s made is only accessible through darkweb torrent networks I wouldn’t name here for fear of losing membership. In recent years, still, a small-even-by-small’s-standards cult has emerged, a just-enough status for this master of incident, image, and interactions––hilarious as in funny-ha-ha, not the dread “arthouse humor.” If there’s anything to account for a non-pareil comedic director falling so out-of-step with means of exposure, consider what the landscapes––financing, exhibition, distribution––roundly not-great for just about anybody would do to a sui generis Argentinian.

A near-decade’s absence hasn’t futzed with skill: La Práctica continues Rejtman’s reign as Argentina’s purveyor of mirthful chuckles, his characteristically patient and absurdity-spotted lens now trained on the...

Shrooms.This year’s edition of TIFF Wavelengths opened with an unannounced extra. It was a 1967 film called Standard Time, an eight-minute series of circular pans around an apartment. The camera speeds up and slows down; it pans right, then left, then right again. Later, the film describes a truncated arc, showing one small section of the flat. Then, the camera pans up and down. Living beings can be glimpsed along the way, most notably a cat perched in a window, artist Joyce Wieland, and a surprise visitor at the end. But they are given the same relative attention as the objects in the space: a TV, a stereo, a cooktop, a blender, and a hutch full of china. Which is to say that all things in the field of the camera’s vision are abstracted, turned into pure painterly velocity.Of course, Standard Time is by Michael Snow, a...

Underscoring a renaissance on Spain’s genre scene, a duo of titles – Daniel Calparsoro’s “All the Names of God” and Carlota Pereda’s “The Chapel” – lead the lineup of the second Spanish Screenings on Tour, which unspools at Rome’s Mia forum, taking place Oct. 9-13.

A platform of market premieres, projects, pics in post and potential remake titles, the Spanish Screenings also underscore the ever stronger emergence in Spain of open arthouse titles – Isaki Lacuesta’s “Saturn Return,” Arantxa Echeverría “Chinas,” Benito Zambrano’s “Jumping the Fence” and Gerardo Herrero’s “Under Therapy,” which was one of the best-selling titles at March’s Malaga Spanish Screenings.

With titles in Next from Spain set to present trailers, Spanish Screenings on Tour will also position a bevy of anticipated feature debuts, at different stages of production, from Spain’s seemingly bottomless well of new talent, such as Jaume Claret Muxart.

Martin Scorsese, Radu Jude, Joanna Hogg, Claire Denis, Bertrand Bonello, M. Night Shyamalan, Kristen Stewart, Hamaguchi Ryusuke and Margarethe von Trotta are among the international filmmakers and talents who have signed an open letter in support of Carlo Chatrian whose mandate as artistic director of the Berlinale will come to an end next year. The number of signatories has now exceeded 400 names and keeps growing.

As we reported last week, Chatrian had been expected to stay on beyond 2024, and was surprised to learn that the German body which oversees the festival, Kulturveranstaltungen des Bundes in Berlin (Kbb), announced that it would no extend his contract. The org had previously said it would abandon the model of having an executive director and an artistic director and return instead to having a single director, following the next edition. The festival’s executive director Mariëtte Rissenbeek will also be leaving her post after the next edition.

Spanish filmmakers, including Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, and Alfonso Cuarón, have created some of the best Spanish-language movies and TV shows of this century, winning Oscars and introducing the next generation of directors. The best Spanish movies and TV shows on streaming services offer a diverse range of genres and themes, including unconventional art experiences, scathing critiques of the film industry, telenovela remakes, and biopics that delve into controversial stories. Spanish-language programming has also been adapted and remade internationally, with shows like Metástasis (Colombian remake of Breaking Bad) and Grand Hotel (spinoff of Downton Abbey) finding success in different markets. This highlights the global appeal of Spanish movies and TV shows.

The best Spanish movies and TV shows on streaming services include some great offerings that, in some cases, surpass what is available from other countries, including the United States. The Spanish-speaking world has made several classics, both old and modern,...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Annihilation (Alex Garland)

More terrifying than any creature Hollywood could dream up is the unraveling of one’s mind—the steady loss of a consciousness as defined by the memories, motivations, and knowledge built up from decades of experience and reflection. With Annihilation, Alex Garland’s beautiful, frightening follow-up to Ex Machina, he portrays this paralyzing sensation with a sense of vivid imagination, and also delivers a cadre of horrifying creatures to boot. – Jordan R. (full review)

Where to Stream: Netflix

Barbarian (Zach Cregger)

The kind of horror film that resembles the experience of traveling down the dark recesses of one’s nightmares, Barbarian is also quite funny to boot. While its thin characterization and merely surface-level thrills hold it back from...

Perched on the shores of lake Revine, in North East Italy, Lago Film Fest has cemented itself as a go-to event for short film enthusiasts around the world. Now at its nineteenth edition, each July Lff brings together filmmakers and film lovers for a nine-day cornucopia of over 170 shorts screening in open-air cinemas set up around the lake. But the crowning jewel may well be A Shape of Film to Come, a series of thought-provoking and candid conversations that run parallel to the festival, and invite some of its most distinguished guests to speak about their craft. Just last year, Alexandre Koberidze, Kiro Russo, Mitra Farahani, and Matías Piñeiro traveled to Lff to talk about their cinephilia, their filmographies, and how they see the medium evolving in the not so distant future.

In a wide-ranging chat with Kiro Russo, the Bolivian filmmaker behind such marvels as, most recently, El Gran...

Mubi Podcast: Encuentros returns this week with a new episode.The fifth episode features:Laura Paredes, an Argentine actress, recognized in the theater scene for being part of Piel de Lava, one of the most outstanding groups inside and outside her country for its strong experimental approach. Paredes has worked in film with Argentine directors such as Martín Rejtman, Santiago Mitre, and Matías Piñeiro. She has starred in Laura Citarella's two feature films: Ostende (2011) and Trenque Lauquen (2022), the latter of which premiered at the most recent edition of the Venice Film Festival.  The second guest is Manuela Martelli, a Chilean actress and director whose career began with outstanding performances in films in her country directed by Andrés Wood and Gonzalo Justiniano. Since then, she has appeared in films by renowned Latin American directors such as Sebastián Lelio, Martín Rejtman, and Alicia Scherson, as well as in projects in Italy,...

A Flower in the Mouth.There is a common thread between two otherwise disparate premieres in the Forum section of this year’s Berlin International Film Festival—Eric Baudelaire’s A Flower in the Mouth, shot in France and the Netherlands, and Dane Komljen’s Afterwater, shot in Germany. Both films benefited from the direct involvement of the Jeonju Cinema Project: an extraordinary funding and development initiative undertaken in partnership with the South Korean city’s local government and the programming team of its annual film festival. Together, these two works mark out something like a gesture of intention for the project. Baudelaire’s film is a rich, single-setting response to the demands of microbudget filmmaking and pandemic strictures both, particularly in its second half, which transposes a 1922 Luigi Pirandello play to an all-night café in Paris. Meanwhile, Komjlen’s film is a more ephemeral vision overall, composed largely...

The May 2022 lineup at Mubi here in the United States has been unveiled, most notably featuring a Cannes Takeover timed with the 75th edition of the festival. At long last, Arnaud Desplechin’s Philip Roth adaptation Deception will arrive stateside alongside Karim Ainouz’s documentary Mariner of the Mountains. Reaching further back into the festival’s history, Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure and The Square, David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible, and Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank will also come to the service.

Their Franz Rogowski series will also continue with Great Freedom and Love Steaks, while works from Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Gia Coppola, Joachim Trier, Jeff Nichols, Satyajit Ray, Takashi Miike, and more will also arrive.

Check out the lineup below and get 30 days free here.

5/1/2022 | Everybody Street | Cheryl Dunn

5/2/2022 | Love Steaks | Jakob Lass

5/3/2022 | Our Lady of the Nile | Atiq Rahimi

5/4/2022 | Time Piece | Jim Henson

5/5/2022 | R100 | Hitoshi Matsumoto...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

After Yang (kogonada)

Following his serenely stunning drama Columbus, video-essayist-turned-director kogonada headed to the future with After Yang. The gorgeous, moving drama about what makes up a family premiered at last year’s Cannes (where our own Rory O’Connor was mixed) and after a few tweaks recently landed at Sundance, where it received quite a rapturous response. Starring Colin Farrell, Jodie Turner-Smith, Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja, Justin H. Min, Sarita Choudhury, Haley Lu Richardson, and Clifton Collins Jr., it follows Farrell as Jake, a father who attempts to repair the malfunction Yang, an android that was a companion to his young daughter. In his second feature, kogonada perfectly depicts quite a seemingly realistic near-future while still retaining the peaceful artistic sensibilities of his debut.

Next month’s Mubi lineup for the U.S. has been unveiled, with a major highlight being their recent release Lingui, The Sacred Bonds and more films from director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun (read our recent chat with him). Matías Piñeiro’s Isabella and Kazik Radwanski’s Anne at 13,000 Ft., two of last year’s highlights, will also arrive.

Two recent Cannes premieres, the Adèle Exarchopoulos-led Zero Fucks Given and Peter Tscherkassky’s Train Again will also finally come to the U.S. courtesy of Mubi. In terms of older highlights, Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark, Hong Sang-soo’s The Power of the Kangwon Province, Jafar Panahi’s Crimson Gold, Jean Renoir’s Grand Illusion, and more will arrive.

Check out the lineup below and get 30 days free here.

March 1 | The Willmar 8 | Lee Grant | Down and Out in America: Lee Grant’s Documentaries

March 2 | Train Again | Peter Tscherkassky | Brief Encounters

March...

Cinema Guild has acquired U.S. distribution rights to Payal Kapadia’s “A Night of Knowing Nothing,” which won the Golden Eye award for best documentary at Cannes.

Kapadia’s debut film, “A Night of Knowing Nothing” world premiered at Cannes’ Directors Fortnight. It also won the Amplify Voices Award at Toronto, as well as the Emerging Cinematic Vision Award at Camden fest; and also played at the New York Film Festival.

The documentary is set in contemporary India, at the local film and television institute, where a student writes love letters to her estranged lover. The doc also delivers a snapshot of the drastic changes taking place within the school and across the country as young people take the streets to protest against discrimination.

Represented in international markets by Square Eyes, “A Night of Knowing Nothing” mixes reality with fiction and includes archival footage of student protests to draw...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Sonny Chiba in Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003). Sonny Chiba, the prolific and singular actor, martial artist and choreographer, has died at the age of 82.New York Film Festival has unveiled its Currents section, featuring a strong slate that includes Artavazd Peleshian, Ted Fendt, Shengze Zhu, Christopher Harris, Shireen Seno, Matías Piñeiro and more. NYFF will also be screening seven programs dedicated to the centenary of the late film programmer and festival co-founder Amos Vogel. The retrospective includes works by Glauber Rocher, Oskar Fischinger, and Dušan Makavejev. The Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival has announced its lineup. This year's Focus program will showcase the works of Cambodian production company Anti-Archive, Nguyễn Trinh Thí, Rajee Samarasinghe, and Sps Community Media. Organized by Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art, Archival Assembly #1 will take place from...

Ricky D’Ambrose’s “The Cathedral” is set to bow at the Venice Film Festival.

Starring Monica Barbaro and Brian D’Arcy James, the film was selected for the Biennale College Cinema 2020-2021 program, the development workshop created by the Venice Biennale for emerging filmmakers to produce micro-budget feature-length films.

Semi-autobiographical in scope, the film focuses on Jesse, the only child of Richard (D’Arcy James) and Lydia (Barbaro) Damrosch. It is an only child’s meditative, impressionistic account of an American family’s rise and fall over two decades.

The film is produced by Graham Swon (Matías Piñeiro’s “Hermia & Helena”), Ted Fendt (“Classical Periods”) and D’Ambrose’s Ravenser Odd. The film is executive produced by David Lowery.

James is best known for his portrayal of Matt Carroll in Tom McCarthy’s 2016 Academy Award-winning film “Spotlight.” He is represented by Gersh, Thruline Entertainment and attorney Amy Nickin.

Barbaro is represented by UTA,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSChameleon StreetThe New York Film Festival has announced an excellent selection for its Revivals section. The roster includes restorations of Mira Nair's Mississippi Masala, John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13, Sarah Maldoror's Sambizanga, Wendell B. Harris Jr.'s Chameleon Street, and Michael Powell's Bluebeard's Castle. The 2021 Locarno Film Festival has come to an end, with Indonesian filmmaker Edwin's Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash winning the Golden Leopard. For a full list of this year's award winners, read here. Recommended VIEWINGAhead of premiere, a trailer for the latest Spike Lee joint: the four-part documentary series NYC Epicenters: 9/11 → 2021 ½. The series, which captures twenty years of New York City history from the perspective of its citizens, will premiere on HBO Max August 22. Cinema Guild has released a trailer for Matías Piñeiro's Isabella.

"Our doubts are treacherous." NYC's Cinema Guild has debuted the official US trailer for an Argentinian film titled Isabella, opening in NYC in a few weeks. The title is a reference to one of the characters from Shakespeare's comedy "Measure for Measure". This premiered at last year's Berlin Film Festival, and it also stopped by the IndieLisboa and New York Film Festivals. This very vibrant, experimental film is about an actress – Mariel – who wants to play Isabella in Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure". Luciana, who is also an actress, helps her rehearse the part. But during the audition, Mariel realizes that Luciana is trying out for the very same role. "The latest in Matías Piñeiro's series of films inspired by the women of Shakespeare's comedies is his most structurally daring and visually stunning work to date... Isabella is a film about the ongoing battle between doubt and ambition that never...