The Lovers and the Despot tells what should be an interesting story without doing the work to create one. It recounts a bizarre slice of South Korean cinema history: in 1978, director Shin Sang-ok and his ex-wife, actress Choi Eun-hee, were kidnapped, separately, by Kim Jung-II from Hong Kong and held for eight years. Kim Jung-Il wanted swift improvements in the North Korean film industry, and this was his solution.
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Notes on Blindness explores the soundscape
Documentarians Peter Middleton and James Spinney use segments of John M. Hull’s actual audio tape recordings to reconstruct his experience of going blind in this experimental non-fiction film.
Things to Come is a less damning portrait of misfortune than Eden
Berlinale correspondent Elena Lazic examines how Mia Hansen-Løve’s last two films, Eden and L’Avenir (Things to Come), reverse-engineer seemingly cliched stories in order to find the emotional truth and realism buried within them.
Compassion may be the enemy in A War
Tobias Lindholm continues to explore how trauma affects networks of people in this complex character study of a Danish officer whose compassion may be his undoing.
Berlinale 2016 preview: a strong year for women on both sides of the camera
Elena Lazic, our Berlinale correspondent, takes a look at the most exciting films in the festival, including films directed by and about women, and films from Canada, France, and ex-Yugoslavia countries.
Gerard Barrett on addiction and loneliness in Glassland
Irish writer-director Gerard Barrett’s second film, the sensitive and heartbreaking “Glassland” — about an almost grown boy, John (Jack Reynor) and the stress he faces when he’s forced to become his parent’s (Toni Collette) parent — premiered at Sundance last year. Barrett discusses how he got interested in the film, how he works with actors, and how he designed the aesthetic for the film.