Reviews

In an absorbing, challenging and beautifully shot film, a passionate tight-knit group of young Syrian women embark upon on a radical and perhaps controversial project, producing a play that details and exposes the culture of misogyny and sexual abuse that has been part of the everyday lives of women in their country for generations.

Combining diaristic film footage of society/nature with 3D scanner images, Czech filmmaker Viera Čákanyová playfully and provocatively explores the potential of blockchain technology and artificial intelligence to deal with complex global problems. Notes from Eremocene (Poznámky z Eremocénu) world-premieres in Berlinale Forum.

Dearest Fiona, an art film by Fiona Tan having its world premiere in Berlinale’s Forum section, consists of two very different elements. We see scenes from silent Dutch documentaries, showing life at the beginning of the 20th century. And we hear an actor reading letters her father wrote to her around 1988/89. I went looking for a way to connect the two. The production company behind the film is called Antithesis Films. That’s an interesting name. Let’s use that as a starting point…

The stunning scenery of the Austrian Alps acts as the perfect backdrop for Bernhard Braunstein’s absorbing doc about acclaimed ski boarding school Stams, where top young skiing talent chase their dreams. For these fresh-faced youngsters it is all about the possibility of making the Olympics, but their journey also includes strict exercise, academic lessons as well as battles with the dangerously icy slopes.

Some perspectives can only be revealed by insiders. That can provide unexpected insights, present unknowable facts and deliver very uncomfortable truths, as in this unvarnished portrait of a gold mining village in Burkina Faso, in which the prospect of redemptive wealth holds the inhabitants in an iron stranglehold.

In his highly engaging feature debut, Guinean director Thierno Souleymane Diallo sets out to find the lost first film by a Black filmmaker from francophone Africa, 1953’s Mouramani by compatriot Mamadou Touré. The quest seems at times both disheartening and optimistic, but watching Diallo’s efforts is as easy as taking a walk in the park. Although a lot happens, the film just glides through it all, propelled by the director’s winning personality and his unwavering optimism about his craft and his art.

Was there really a historical and cultural bond between Iran and Romania? Until watching Between Revolutions that possibility never even crossed my mind. But this personal and visualised exchange of letters between two friends sketches, both organically and lyrically, the connections and parallels between the dark histories of these two countries.

Piotr Pawlus and Tomasz Wolski’s distanced approach to everyday life in war-torn Ukraine may make for uncomfortable tension as its impersonal concept seems to prevent real human connection, but this more measured and sociological take gives the viewer time to reflect on the daily realities of war away from the frontlines. And there is much to be said for this approach.

Sean Penn and Aaron Kaufman’s portrait of war-torn Ukraine, focusing on President Zelenskyy, is a personal exploration of the conflict in the simplest terms, aimed at reaching an American audience that knows little about the country. As such, it works, and if it manages to reach and inform its target audience, inspiring them to support Ukraine, then Superpower, in its chosen genre, should be deemed a good film.

Seven Winters in Tehran is a tough watch. This has nothing to do with the qualities of the film but with the incredible injustice the main protagonist and her family are subjected to. The kind of injustice we unfortunately have grown accustomed to when watching documentaries from Iran. Even so, this one still manages to put a knife through your heart.