Boris Becker Serves up Candor at Berlin Event and in ‘Boom! Boom!’ Documentary

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic How long does a documentary need to be? Frederick Wiseman frequently goes long, and Oscar-winning “OJ: Made in America” ran nearly eight hours. Lately, with “Bill Russell: Legend” and “Boom! Boom! The World vs. Boris Becker,” streamers have embraced the so-called “two-part documentary” — a fancy term for what used to be called a miniseries. So, while there are no limits on how much longer docs can get, it’s refreshing to see a compelling subject covered in 40 minutes or less, and doubly rewarding to realize that four of the five packaged in ShortsTV’s “2023 Oscar Nominated Short Films: Documentary” found audiences on their own merits, even without theatrical distribution.

OG Made in Chelsea fans won’t find it difficult to remember Victoria Baker-Harber. The 34 year old designer joined the cast back in 2011 and stayed pretty separate from the rest of the cast - apart from her bestie, Mark Francis Vandelli. During her MIC years, the two literally came as a pair, and were usually found either gossiping about the rest of the MIC clan, arguing with one of them, or just staying completely away from them.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Asian premiere of Soi Cheang’s “Mad Fate” is just one of three locally-produced movies that have been set as the opening and closing titles of the upcoming Hong Kong International Film Festival. “Mad Fate” is joined in the festival opening slot on March 30 by “Elegies,” Ann Hui’s documentary portrayal of the topography of contemporary local poetry, which will have its world premiere. The closing film, another world premiere, is “Vital Sign,” an affecting drama directed by Cheuk Wan-chi and starring Louis Koo, Yau Hawk-sau, and Angela Yuen, which will wrap up proceedings on 10 April. In total, the festival has programmed some 200 films from 64 countries and territories. These include nine world premieres, six international premieres, and 67 Asian premieres.

K.J. Yossman “Boom! Boom: The World vs. Boris Becker,” the upcoming Apple TV+ documentary that premiered in Berlin last month, has confirmed a release date. The full two-part doc, about disgraced tennis champ Boris Becker, will drop on the streamer on April. 7. The documentary, which was directed by Alex Gibney (“Enron”) and produced by John Battsek (“Searching for Sugar Man”), promises to explore “every aspect of the man who became a tennis sensation after winning The Wimbledon Championships at the age of just 17, going on to win 49 career titles, including six Grand Slams and an Olympic gold medal, as well as his high-profile, sometimes tumultuous personal life,” according to the logline.

Christopher Vourlias Stories of war and its devastating human toll, migration across borders, the struggle for human rights and the battle to save a rapidly warming planet are among the themes that take center stage on March 6 during the Thessaloniki Pitching Forum, the co-production and co-financing platform of the Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival. Fourteen projects representing filmmakers from 21 countries will be pitching before an audience of international industry guests including producers, broadcasters, funding bodies and festival programmers, as well as a jury comprised of Eleni Chandrinou, a consultant and producer from Cigale Films; Nevena Milašinović, a sales and acquisitions executive from Lightdox; and Sara Rüster, international distribution manager at the Swedish Film Institute.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Cyber Heist,” a crime thriller directed by Hong Kong’s Wong Hing-fan (“I’m Livin’ It”) and scripted by Soi Cheang (aka Cheang Pou Soi), took the top spot at the mainland Chinese box office over the weekend. It earned a very modest $6.2 million, according to data from consultancy Artisan Gateway. But that was enough to win on the quietest weekend since January’s Lunar New Year holiday season. “Cyber Heist” stars Aaron Kwok as a cyber security engineer who develops a state-of-the-art firewall that is capable of fending off online attacks against the global financial system. But he does not realize that in doing so he has stepped into a minefield that is even more dangerous. The picture also stars Lam Ka-tun and Simon Yam.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Sculptor turned director Wu Lang made a splash at the Berlin Film Festival with his debut feature “Absence” playing in the festival’s showcase Encounters section. With a high-profile cast headed by Lee Kang-sheng (“What Time Is It There?” “The Wayward Cloud”) and Li Meng (“The Bad Kids,” “The Guillotines”) “Absence” is an art-house romance that uses skyscapes and urban landscapes as metaphors for inner feelings. The seduction starts with a man’s return to Hainan Island after ten years in jail and ends with a flock of sheep in an abandoned construction site. Wu: Shooting the first short film for me had two purposes. First, making a film is not easy in terms of financing and finding coproducers. So, first I wanted to make a short in order to get myself started.

Bill Murray and star Jeannie Berlin set foot on the red carpet of the 2023 SAG Awards holding hands.Murray and Berlin appeared quite close when they arrived together for Sunday's soiree at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles. The star wore a black tuxedo with a colorful bow tie, while Berlin sported an all-black suit and shades.Berlin, who portrayed Hadassah Fabelman in the Steven Spielberg film, was there for the film's nomination in the Best Ensemble Cast in a Motion Picture category.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” held on to top spot at the South Korean box office. But the overall market continued to soften despite a slew of new release titles. Nationwide theatrical grosses totaled just $7.26 million. That made it the slowest box office weekend in over three months. “Quantumania” collected $2.0 million between Friday and Sunday, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic), and enjoyed a 27% market share. The second weekend increment lifted its 12-day total to $10.6 million. Long-running Japanese animation title, “The First Slam Dunk” earned $1.36 million in its eighth weekend on release. Since Jan. 4 it has accumulated $28.0 million.

Nicholas Philibert, whose film On the Adamant won the Golden Bear at the 73rd Berlinale on Saturday, has made a lifetime commitment to observational documentary, moving between interviews and long, patient takes of his subjects pursuing what it is that they do. The best known of these is Etre et Avoir (2002), which followed a year in the life of a tiny rural school where the single teacher – kindly but exacting, in the French manner – taught several grades at once. Thanks to the magnetism of this committed teacher – and of his delightful enfants, of course – Etre et Avoir became an unlikely but enduring arthouse hit.

can be found here.MAIN COMPETITIONGolden Bear for Best Film: “On the Adamant” (“Sur l’Adamant”), Nicolas PhilibertSilver Bear Grand Jury Prize: “Afire” (“Roter Himmel”), Christian PetzoldSilver Bear Jury Prize: “Bad Living” (“Mal Viver”), Joao CanijoSilver Bear for Best Director: Philippe Garrel, “The Plough”Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance: Sofia Otero, “20,000 Species of Bees”Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance: Thea Ehre, “Till the End of the Night”Silver Bear for Best Screenplay: Angela Schanelec, “Music”Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution: Hélène Louvart for the cinematography of “Disco Boy”ENCOUNTERSBest Film: “Here,” Bas DevosBest Director: “The Echo,” Tatiana HuezoSpecial Jury Award: “Samsara,” Lois PatiñoSpecial Jury Award: “Orlando, My Political Biography,” Paul B. PreciadoGWFF Best First Feature Award: “The Klezmer Project,” Leandro Koch, Paloma SchachmannSpecial Mention: “The Bride,” Myriam U.

EXCLUSIVE: HBO Films has closed a deal for U.S. rights to the Berlin Film Festival buzz competition title Reality. Directed by Tina Satter, the docudrama is a breakout turn for Sydney Sweeney as convicted classified document leaker Reality Winner. Sweeney stars in the hit HBO series Euphoria.

Odd people turn up in deserts. People are also inclined to disappear. A strange moonscape of opal prospectors’ digs and slurry heaps helps to set a bleak mood in Australian filmmaker Ivan Sen’s Limbo, shot in gently faded black and white in the South Australian mining town of Coober Pedy, repurposed here as Limbo. Limbo, says the preacher whose radio show seems to be the only thing available on the local airwaves, is the edge of hell. Here, unpurged sinners may be “in friendship with God.” Damnation, however, isn’t far away.

Naman Ramachandran Berlin’s just concluded European Film Market (EFM), which had a physical edition this year after two online editions in 2021 and 2022 due to the pandemic, has reported “record results” according to the organizers. There were 230 stands and 612 companies from 78 countries and more than 11,500 market participants from 132 countries. Some 773 films were shown in 1,533 screenings, including 647 online screenings and 599 market premieres. The total number of buyers also rose to 1,302. 629 film projects were presented on the new Producers & Project Pages. “After the past two irregular years, we’re pleased to return to the physical in full force, and with a vibrant, bustling and strong market. The exhibition areas at Gropius Bau and the Marriott Hotel were sold out, and the exhibitors reported strong sales and good business. The decision to group all the market happenings together with the Berlinale Series Market and the market screenings at Potsdamer Platz, and to provide the industry with an efficient infrastructure, was extremely well-received by our market participants,” said EFM director Dennis Ruh.

When tennis champion Boris Becker entered the room for a press conference in Berlin before the world premiere of the documentary about his storied career and troubled personal life, camera shutters clicked furiously and flashes flashed. He is, after all, one of Germany’s most famous native sons and a widely loved sports legend, despite a conviction for a bankruptcy-related fraud that landed him behind bars in Britain for eight months.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema has unveiled its 85-title lineup for the edition that starts later this month (February 28 to March 7, 2023). Elements include a 10-film competition section, a 10-film documentary film section, a tribute to the Turkish director Semih Kaplanoglu; a thematic section “Asian Diaspora Cinema” offering a panorama of works by directors from Asian countries living in exile; and a Philippines cinema sidebar. Fiction films in competition include: Azerbaijan’s “Cold as Marble,” by Asif Rustamov; China’s “In Our Prime,” by Liu Yulin; Korea’s “A Letter from Kyoto,” by Kim Min-ju; India’s: “Behind Veils,” by Praveen Morshhale; Iran’s “No End,” by Nader Saievar; Mongolia’s “The Sales Girl,” by Sengedorj Janchivdorj; The Philippines’s “Feast,” by Brillante Mendoza; Singapore’s “#LookAtMe,” by Ken Kwek; and Vietnam’s “Memento Mori: Earth,” by Marcus Vu Manh Cuong. The president of the jury is Lee Yong-kwan, president of the Busan film festival.

Christopher Vourlias Though the world watched — often in silence — as a decade-long civil war tore Syria apart, exiled filmmakers Talal Derki (“Of Fathers and Sons”) and Heba Khaled say an equally brutal but less visible war is still raging. In “Under the Sky of Damascus,” which premieres Feb. 20 in the Panorama strand of the Berlin Film Festival, the duo shifts the lens to the silenced majority of Syrian women who routinely face sexual harassment, violence and abuse in their patriarchal society. The film follows a tight-knit group of young Syrian women who embark upon on a radical project to produce a play that lays bare the culture of misogyny and sexual abuse that has blighted the lives of females in their country for generations.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Berlinale Special section of the Berlin Film Festival is a showcase for movies that are intelligent, but less arty than those in the main competition or festival sidebars. And in showcasing mainstream non-English-language films the section is also a springboard for performers who may be big news at home, but who are little-known outside their core markets. Japan’s Nakajima Yuto fits that description perfectly. He has a dual career as a singer with boy band Hey! Say! Jump! and more than a decade as an actor. His acting credits including the Mike Ross role in the Japanese remake of hit U.S. series “Suits.” In his position as a music idol appealing to a volatile, younger demographic, means that selecting acting roles is — normally — something requiring careful consideration.

Boris Becker has revealed he started crying in jail, as he watched Novak Djokovic win Wimbledon in 2022. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Berlin Film Festival is once again finding house room for Hong Kong’s most commercially successful enfant terrible, Soi Cheang, aka Cheang Pou Soi, who previously brought film noir “Limbo” to the Berlinale. This time he attends with “Mad Fate,” a film about destiny that may be Cheang’s most bloodthirsty, but which the director says is intended to be inspirational. It plays in the Berlinale Special section. Born in Macau, Cheang developed his career at the feet of Ringo Lam, Andrew Lau, Joe Ma, Wilson Yip and Johnnie To, the great stylists of the crime and action film genre across the Pearl River estuary in Hong Kong. To, who is on the Berlin jury this year, is also a producer on “Mad Fate” through his Makerville label.