Berlin Review: Anna Smith On ‘I’m Your Man’ – Int’l Critics Line

Bleecker Street has picked up the U.S. rights to Maria Schrader's I'm Your Man, which stars Dan Stevens and Maren Eggert and premiered in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Bleecker Street has acquired U.S. rights to Maria Schrader’s I’m Your Man after the film picked up a Silver Bear for Maren Eggert’s lead performance at the 2021 Berlin International Film Festival.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorBleecker Street has acquired U.S. rights to Maria Schrader’s “I’m Your Man,” which won the Berlinale’s Silver Bear for leading performance for Maren Eggert.

International buyers have jumped on Maria Schrader's I'm Your Man, and the Daniel Brühl-directed Next Door, both of which premiered in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival last week.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorBerlinale Competition entries from two actors turned directors, Maria Schrader and Daniel Brühl, were among titles on the Beta Cinema slate at the European Film Market to prove popular among international distributors.Schrader, an Emmy Award winner as the director of “Unorthodox,” premiered comic-tragic tale “I’m Your Man,” starring Dan Stevens (“Downton Abbey”), Maren Eggert (“I Was At Home, But…”) and Sandra Hueller (“Toni Erdmann”), at the virtual

Filmed in glossy black and white, and adopting a non-judgmental vérité approach, director Carlos Alfonso Corral’s debut is a humanizing look at a small section of the homeless population in El Paso, Texas. “Dirty Feathers,” is a short, but thematically rich, film about those on the margins of society.

It’s 1943. A particularly cruel winter has swept through the occupied Soviet Union.

One year in the life of a teenager can feel like an eternity. The intensity of the fleeting romances, the wild swings between happiness and despair, the thrilling yet uneasy anticipation of a future that seems simultaneously imminent and distant — it’s a wonder that we come out of adolescence intact.

How often does the cosmos grant us love at first sight? What if you were to be given such an exceptional gift, derived from an impossible encounter in the middle of the street, only for it to be teasingly snatched away? You may think it far from likely, but this is precisely what happens to Giorgi (Giorgi Bochorishvili), and Lisa (Ani Karseladze) in “What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? Continue reading ‘What Do We See When We Look At The Sky?’: Alexandre Koberidze Creates A Compelling Fable

Not long into I'm Your Man, Dan Stevens' character, a genial android named Tom, arranges a perfectly contrived combination of romantic clichés for his would-be partner, Alma. The rose petals are "artfully" strewn, the candles flicker, and flutes of bubbly are ready for sipping beside the bubble-filled tub.

You have to wonder when she sleeps. The tireless Maria Schrader — fresh off an Emmy win as outstanding director of a limited series for Netflix's Unorthodox and another critically acclaimed turn in front of the camera as East German spy Lenora Rauch in Amazon's Deutschland 89 — somehow managed, during a pandemic, to shoot her fourth feature film.

The first thing to understand about the social dynamics in Mexico around police is that they differ greatly from how the public in the United States relates to law enforcement officers. Stateside, both the uncritical reverence some feel toward them—namely the Blue Lives Matter crowd—and the terror they incite among BIPOC communities emanate from their violent efficaciousness and status as inflexible figures reveling in a lack of accountability.

As industry guests enjoy the Berlinale from home this year, eagle-eyed viewers will take pleasure in spotting a familiar location in the latest film from South Korean auteur and festival-regular Hong Sang-soo. If we can’t stroll around Potsdamer Platz this year, at least the characters in “Introduction“ can share a moment there.

Late Wednesday, Critics Choice Association chief Joey Berlin sent a missive to members of the organization that was, well, critical of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and its disastrous Golden Globe Awards telecast last weekend.

The two most mature and emotionally insightful seven-year-old girls you’ve ever encountered in your life are the subjects of Petite Maman. Magnetically attentive to the serious “things of life,” as the French put it, Céline Sciamma’s 72-minute study of an intense brief friendship between two girls of extraordinary similar looks prioritizes insight and emotional awareness over any artificial plot constructs. The result is a piercingly satisfying chamber drama with a lovely intimate feel.

The latest from T.J.Martin and Daniel Lindsay, directors of “Undefeated” and “LA 92,” “TINA” looks like another documentary that came off of a factory line, complete with the usual panning shots of contact sheets, dramatic zooms into rolling tapes, cross-cutting between audio interviews and their published print versions, melodramatic score cues doing their best to emulate Philip Glass.

There is an unavoidable distance in life between ourselves and those who came before. Parents, grandparents; no matter how open and honest they are with their children or younger relatives, there is a sense that their pasts remain partial enigmas.

For the students at a remote boarding school for Kurdish boys, survival is a matter of course, particularly during the frigid depths of winter. The meals are meager, the heating doesn’t work, and even the principal’s car won’t start.

It’s always interesting to see what an actor will deliver as they make the step towards directing, and for “Next Door” director and star Daniel Brühl has not shied away from a premise that closely parallels, yet distorts, his own life. It’s a film that explores a space of conversation highlighted to great effect in Bong Joon-ho’s recent towering success, “Parasite,” toying with societal dichotomies and opening up discussions around wealth, class, gentrification, and spatial divides.

South Korean filmmaker Hong Sangsoo has been a particular favorite at the Berlin Film Festival for quite some time — he won the Best Director prize there last year for The Woman Who Ran — and he’s back again this year with another competition entry, Introduction.