Berlinale Bloggers 2020
Five German-related film highlights from Berlinale 2020

Franz Rogowski in Christian Petzold's film „Undine“
Photo: (Detail) © Hans Fromm / Schramm Film

Whether made in Germany or directed by German filmmakers elsewhere, these five films from this year's Berlinale are worth looking out for.

By Sarah Ward

When Berlinale takes over Berlin for 11 days every February, it brings the cinematic world to the city. For each of its 70 years, the film festival has also fulfilled an equally crucial task: showcasing the latest and greatest films from Germany, made by German filmmakers and otherwise related to the country.
 
That continued in 2020 and Berlinale’s German contingent for the year proved a varied bunch. Some went home with prizes. Others proved clichéd, even with well-known talents attached. And some stood out above the rest, such as these five German-related film highlights.

Undine

Two years after Transit screened in Berlinale’s official competition, Christian Petzold, Best Actress Silver Bear winner Paula Beer and Franz Rogowski (pictured above) all reteam for a film that’s just as stunning and, in a plethora of ways, proves both gloriously similar and enchantingly different. In perhaps his most fanciful feature to date, Petzold takes on the titular myth about a water sprite given human form - updated to modern-day Berlin, and continuing the writer/director’s ongoing fascination with the ripples the past leaves on the present - with the magnetic Beer simply stellar in the lead role.

Exile

Caught in a whirlwind of everyday xenophobia and possible paranoia, Kosovo-born filmmaker Visar Morina explores a topic of increasing popularity and ongoing relevance in German cinema. In this exploration of engrained racism, pharmaceutical engineer Xhafer (Mišel Matičević) - also Kosovo-born, and now living in Germany - questions his colleagues’ motives when they begin treating him differently at work. Berlin Ensemble and the Deutsches Theater alum Matičević is fantastic as Exile’s struggling protagonist, while Sandra Hüller, as his German wife who thinks it’s all in his head, is as naturalistic yet potent as ever.
A scene from "One of These Days"
A scene from "One of These Days" from German filmmaker Bastian Günther | © Michael Kotschi / Flare Film

One of these days

For his fourth full-length stint behind the lens, German filmmaker Bastian Günther heads to a southern US town to chronicle one of capitalism’s oddest phenomena. ‘Hands on’ endurance tests aren’t uniquely American but, in this fiercely empathetic small town-set drama, watching eager strangers stand around a truck day and night all in the hope of taking it home says everything about the state of the American dream. As well as being deftly and sensitively directed, One of These Days is also superbly cast, with A Prayer Before Dawn’s Joe Cole and True Blood’s Carrie Preston both heartbreaking as two people on different sides of the competition.

Untitled (formerly Curveball)

One of Berlinale’s gala 2020 films doesn’t actually currently have a title, which adds another chapter to its strange and surreal true story. Originally, Johannes Naber’s latest feature was called Curveball, after the code name given to an informant - an Iraqi asylum seeker - who said they’d been involved in making chemical weapons for Saddam Hussein. Due to legal reasons, the movie’s name is currently in dispute; however the details of this strange but completely tale remain both absurd and fascinating. And, in this polished and often amusing drama, engagingly told as well.

Naked animals

Receiving a special mention for Berlinale’s best first feature award, Naked Animals steps into the insular world of five teens - Katja (Marie Tragousti), Sascha (Sammy Scheuritzel), Benni (Michelangelo Fortuzzi), Laila (Luna Schaller) and Schöller (Paul Michael Stiehler)- who’ve formed their own makeshift family. Making her feature debut, writer/director Melanie Waelde spins her intimate and deeply felt coming-of-age tale around an inevitable fact: that adolescence and change go hand in hand.

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