Modern art painter Antonio Ligabue is the main topic of Italian director Giorgio Diritti‘s Berlinale entry “Volevo Nascondermi (Hidden Away)”. The young Toni, both physically and mentally ill, is adopted by a couple in Switzerland, but later sent back to Italy. There, in poverty and with no real work to do, he focusses on his…

Summer in the suburbs of Rome. Families gather together for dinner, go to the beach, or just do nothing at all. Everything seems a bit dismal for the children who are not at all respected by their parents. Some of them have to show all their A grades in their certificates. As if that warrants…

German-born director Bastian Günther has come up with a great story for “One Of These Days”, running in the Panorama section of this year’s Berlinale. Staged in a town in Texas, there is a competition where people have to place one hand on a pickup truck and are not allowed to take it away. The…

Kelly Reichardt‘s new movie, “First Cow”, my favorite in this year’s competition so far, is a Western told in a new fashion. Oregon, early 19th century, trappers are flooding the continent and the way she describes the development of the friendship of Cookie (brilliantly played by John Magaro) and King-Lu (Orion Lee), is like a…

Documentary directors Courtney Stephens and Pacho Velez have created a 70-minute piece of collecting parts of the original Berlin Wall, put up all over the United States. Many of them can be found in museums, some of them in parks and gated communities, a handful of them were auctioned off by private individuals for their…

There is this special scene in Philippe Falardeau‘s “My Salinger Year”, which opened the 70th Berlinale last night, where literary agent Margaret (played by the hilariously witty Sigourney Weaver) shows her level-headed, almost tender side instead of her otherwise cold and rigorous manner. It’s where she tells aspiring writer Joanna (Margaret Qualley in her next…