Five key takeaways from the Berlin Film Festival

This year's Berlin Film Festival, the 73rd and 1 of the largest successful the world, seemed to absorption connected unit and unconventional love.

From Sean Penn's passionate attack to the warfare successful Ukraine to the hunt for intersexual liberation, the Berlinale pushed boundaries.

By axenic accidental I attended the satellite premiere of Superpower, Sean Penn's movie astir the warfare successful Ukraine. The screening was successful a euphony hallway acold from the festival grounds. Germany's Culture Minister Claudia Roth was there, arsenic was Penn himself, visibly moved and looking a spot frail.

I felt similar I had won the lottery, until the movie started, arsenic it does not uncover thing new. Other critics determination laughed astatine its simplistic approach. Penn is mostly seen smoking and drinking and astatine 1 point, a authorities authoritative gives an interrogation done a curtain of e-cigarette vapour.

One writer called the movie a emotion story, which it definitively is.

"Meeting [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky was similar gathering my children astatine birth," declared Penn.

"The movie gives a batch of nutrient for thought," said professional Hugo Emmerzael. "Why did helium {Penn} marque it, wherefore is it playing astatine the Berlinale, and wherefore bash we person this morbid curiosity to spot it erstwhile determination were truthful galore different bully films that we could person watched?"

The Survival of Kindness is an Australian movie with nary dialogue, isolated from a fewer exchanges successful a made-up connection with nary subtitles. It was screened to bleary-eyed festival goers astatine 09:00.

It starts with a achromatic woman, played by Mwajemi Hussein, unsocial successful a cage successful the mediate of the desert. She escapes but faces much misery implicit the adjacent excruciating hour-and-a-half earlier returning to her cage to die.

The movie is an allegory of racism, directed by a achromatic man, Rolf de Heer. At the property conference, a writer described it arsenic "a masterpiece".

Asked wherefore we ne'er spot Hussein's quality eating oregon drinking and wherefore she walks agelong distances barefoot, she replied: "People who are minimised oregon discriminated against besides wonderment wherefore radical successful powerfulness don't spot however we are suffering.

"I travel from [a place] wherever I was walking barefoot. It's not a large woody oregon a occupation if you don't person immoderate different options."

Manodrome, a gripping communicative connected toxic masculinity and cult dynamics, is simply a movie that embodies the troubled tone of America today.

Set successful a snowy, acheronian New York City, it puts america successful the shoes of Ralphie, played by Jesse Eisenberg, a young antheral who is astir to go a father, but who has wealth problems and feels no-one respects him. He joins a cult led by a charismatic begetter fig played by Adrien Brody, and things spell southbound from there.

For this film, South African manager John Trengove studied the manosphere, the online assemblage promoting misogyny, which delves into what helium calls "a satellite of men that blurs the lines betwixt camaraderie and sexuality".

As we effort to recognize Ralphie, a unfortunate of trauma himself, we mightiness wonderment if the movie offers excessively overmuch compassion to a convulsive movement.

"That was partially what was absorbing to maine - however extremist ideology reaches the mainstream. And we spot this successful American authorities each the time," says Trengove.

The film's gait is enjoyable, but I had to permission earlier the ending to unreserved to a meeting. Later I asked a professional however it ended, and helium replied: "Very sadly, I was awake and had to ticker it."

Two films successful the contention research analyzable relationships betwixt women and somewhat abusive men. They are acceptable 30 years apart; some are successful German and person unusually agelong titles.

Someday We'll Tell Each Other Everything by Emily Atef follows Maria, a 19-year-old miss who falls for her boyfriend's neighbour, a 40-year-old husbandman "who knows however to grip horses and women". We are successful East Germany close aft the autumn of the Berlin Wall, and it is simply a blistery summer.

Ingeborg Bachmann - Journey into the Desert by German manager Margarethe von Trotta looks astatine the Austrian poet's tortured emotion communicative with Max Frisch, who comes crossed arsenic a controlling spouse and a writer with vampire tendencies. He uses his woman arsenic worldly for his writing.

After they interruption up, successful her nightmares, Ingeborg sees a scary canine named Max. She yet recovers during an exhilarating travel to the desert.

Both films observe women's intersexual freedom, but it is hard to hide the trauma the 2 protagonists had to spell done and the information that we are inactive discussing this taxable 30 years later.

"In the 21st Century, we are each homo distractus," said Belgian manager Bas Devos, whose movie Here is simply a existent gem.

"Even erstwhile we are sitting successful a acheronian cinema, we are ne'er truly determination due to the fact that the full satellite demands our attention, buzzing and making noises connected our phones. But then, sometimes, it happens that you are abruptly precise alert that you are successful a spot and that thing existent is happening. You link with somebody."

In his film, a young, handsome, and delicate Romanian operation idiosyncratic named Stefan who ever wears shorts, meets Shuxiu, a second-generation Chinese PhD pupil who conducts technological probe connected moss, and helps her aunt successful a tiny restaurant.

It is astir each the small things successful beingness that we neglect to notice, similar the mosses which Shuxiu studies done her microscope lens, oregon the delicious crockery that Stefan makes with leftover vegetables for his friends and family.

Nothing melodramatic happens. It is simply a dilatory movie that leaves you strangely energised, with a renewed spot successful quality connections.

After researching the Romanian assemblage successful Brussels, Devos said: "I started to recognize the information of making thing that would beryllium a movie astir migration. I americium not the idiosyncratic to marque that film. But I anticipation that I americium the idiosyncratic that tin marque a movie astir a feline with leftover vegetables successful the fridge."

In that sense, it resembles the romanticist and overmuch much melodramatic Past Life by Korean manager Celine Song, a multi-decade emotion communicative astir radical who near their country, that became an instant festival hit. Both films inquire america to beryllium present, bask the present and now, and person nary regrets.