SPAIN
Spain is a film that plays on the concepts of time, violence, but also loneliness and destiny through many stories of as many people who inevitably end up influencing one another.
Actor: Cornelius Obonya
SACHERTORTE
The comedy Sachertorte is an (often excessive) celebration of young, international love and, at the same time, a tribute to the legend of the world’s most famous chocolate cake.
HOW TO BE NORMAL AND THE ODDNESS OF THE OTHER WORLD
How to be normal and the Oddness of the Other World is a particularly interesting feature film not only because of the themes it deals with, but also because of the special and courageous staging adopted by the director. At the Berlinale 2025, Perspectives section.
THE FOX
The Fox might at first seem to be one of the many (too many?) films that depict a special friendship between humans and animals. And when approaching such stories, the risk of creating something overly rhetorical is higher than ever. Adrian Goiginger, fortunately, has managed to avoid such mistakes, focusing mainly on the childhood traumas of the young protagonist. At the Diagonale’23.
ALMA & OSKAR
Alma & Oskar is not only the genesis of some of the most important paintings of the last century. Alma & Oskar is passion, desire, anger. A feature film that is extremely refined in its staging and is inspired by what has been made overseas, while showing its own, marked personality. At the Diagonale’23.
DE FACTO
In De Facto, there is no need for complex set designs, archive material, many actors or the on-set reconstruction of certain historical events. On the contrary, the director focuses on simplicity and the essential, opting for a well-thought-out and strongly minimalist mise-en-scène, which, however, perfectly succeeds in its intentions.
LOUIS VAN BEETHOVEN
We do not see in Louis van Beethoven a composer at work. We do not witness the creative process that led to the birth of some of his most famous compositions. Not the end result, but what, fundamentally, led to it. An undoubtedly winning idea, which, however, made Niki Stein’s feature film an excessively dispersive work, in which the director himself seems too cold towards his protagonist and his works.
HALF A LIFE
In Nikolaus Leytner’s Half a Life, alongside a clear television character, far more complex moral issues concerning anger, resentment, deep sorrow and, last but not least, a heartbreaking sense of guilt are raised.
C(R)OOK
Pepe Danquart’s C(r)ook pis inspired by US gangster movies, but is also closely reminiscent of contemporary French comedies, thanks to a successful mix of genres, between polar and real comedy.
EGON SCHIELE: DEATH AND THE MAIDEN
There really is a lot to be enjoyed in dealing with all the numerous ideas that the life of this brilliant artist has to offer us. All depends on knowing how to handle them well, in order to make a never predictable or didactic work that is able to portray one of Austria’s most important artistic personalities as passionately and faithfully as possible. And Dieter Berner has perfectly succeeded in this never easy and by no means banal task with his Egon Schiele: Death and the Maiden.