Variety’s Berlin Digital Daily, Day 3: HBO Max Eyes European Streaming Strategy

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorARRI Media has closed a deal with Crescendo House – a new boutique distribution company – for North American rights on Marxist vampire comedy “Bloodsuckers,” following its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival.The film, which screened as part of the Berlinale’s Encounters section, was written and directed by Julian Radlmaier.Radlmaier’s script was praised by the jury as being “extravagant, bizarre, and hilarious” when he was presented with the

Christopher Vourlias European Film Promotion, a network of 37 film promotion bodies from across the continent, is gathering 29 European sales companies from nine nations under the Europe! Umbrella at the virtual edition of the Hong Kong Intl. Film & TV Market (FilMart).For the second year running the annual event has been moved online because of the coronavirus pandemic.

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.

Berlin’s Netflix Film MarketFor the last two years, a Netflix panel was the hottest ticket at the Berlinale Series Market Conference. But the U.S.

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.

Amazon Prime Video has swooped on the critically acclaimed Chilean LGBTQ+ drama My Tender Matador for Latin America. The film —which first bowed in the Venice Days sidebar of the 2020 Venice Film Festival —won the audience award in the Open Horizons section of the 2020 Thessaloniki Film Festival.

This year, more than most, Berlin's European Film Market was an opportunity to gauge the health of the global indie industry. Judging from the business done over the past week — the 2021 EFM wraps Friday — the general assessment would be: The patient is stable and the prognosis is promising.

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.

When, last May, the Cannes Film Market bowed to the inevitable and went online-only, it was a leap in the dark.

Manori Ravindran International EditorSince you can’t be in Berlin this year, Variety is bringing Berlin to you. We’re publishing daily digital editions, running March 1-4, of coverage from the European Film Market.

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.

Jamie Lang Brussels-based Best Friend Forever Sales has given Variety exclusive access to the international trailer for Berlin Panorama player “All Eyes Off Me,” the sexually charged sophomore outing of actor-director Hadas Ben Aroya.Told in three distinct yet related chapters, the film begins at a party in Tel Aviv where young Danny is trying to find Max to let him know that she’s pregnant with his child.

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.

Spain brings an extraordinary gamut of movie titles to Berlin. Some highlights:“All the Moons,” (Igor Legarreta)A France-Spain co-production, “All the Moons” tracks two vampires in the northern Spain during the last Carlist war.

Variety Staff Follow Us on TwitterSince you can’t be in Berlin this year, Variety is bringing Berlin to you. We’re publishing daily digital editions, running March 1-4, of coverage from the European Film Market.

There’s no doubt about it, it’s all in the eyes: an ice-blue stare, locked on you, promising satisfaction and loyalty without asking for anything in return. That’s what love is, and Dan Stevens is the humanoid robot here to give it to us.