Berlinale 62 // Concorso internazionale

Il mondo in rivolta. Questo è il filo rosso che lega fra loro gli oltre 400 titoli selezionati da Dieter Kosslick ed il suo staff per la 62esima edizione della Berlinale (9-19 febbraio 2012).
Diciotto le opere scelte per il concorso internazionale, con una forte predominanza di produzioni e coproduzioni europee. A giudicare ed a premiare una giuria, presieduta dal regista britannico Mike Leight, e composta dal regista olandese Anton Corbijn, l’iraniano Asghar Farhadi (vincitore lo scorso anno con Una separazione, ed intervistato da RC), la meravigliosa Charlotte Gainsbourg, l’attore hollywoodiano Jake Gyllenhaal, il regista e sceneggiatore francese François Ozon, lo scrittore algerino Boualem Sansal e l’attrice tedesca Barbara Sukowa (molti la ricorderanno in Berlin Alexanderplatz di Fassbinder).

62° Berlinale | Berlin International Film Festival
9-19 febbraio 2012
berlinale.de

BERLINALE 2012 | CONCORSO INTERNAZIONALE

BERLINALE 2012 | FUORI CONCORSO + EVENTI SPECIALI

▪ WP : Anteprima mondiale
▪ IP : Anteprima internazionale
▪ EP : Anteprima europea
▪ DP : Anteprima tedesca

A moi seule (Coming Home)
regia: Frédéric Videau | Francia – 2011 – 91′
cast: Agathe Bonitzer, Reda Kateb, Hélène Fillières, Noémie Lvovsky
produzione: Les Films Hatari (Parigi)
Prima mondiale

SYNOPSIS | A young woman sits at a remote bus stop looking at the image of a missing girl. It is her own photograph; eight years ago, Gaëlle was kidnapped and shut away from the world. Now she has to cope with her traumatic experience and her strange new-found liberty. The film takes the viewer back in time to witness her incredible struggle for survival. Gaëlle crouches in a windowless cellar. She waits and waits for her kidnapper to appear. Since he is her only interlocutor she must somehow find a way to connect with him. As she attempts to establish a relationship slowly the balance of power begins to change. The young girl starts bossing her tormentor; complaining about his long working hours and demanding to be taken out on trips by car at night. After her release she still finds herself left to her own devices, since nobody close to her knows how to behave with someone who has spent half their young life in captivity. À MOI SEULE is a controversial work with a disturbingly powerful protagonist who is obliged to carve out her own idiosyncratic path in life.

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Aujourd’hui (Tey)
regia: Alain Gomis | Francia/Senegal – 2011 – 96′
cast: Saül Williams, Aïssa Maïga, Djolof M’bengue, Anisia Uzeyman
produzione: Granit Films (Parigi), Maïa Cinema (Parigi), Cinekap (Dakar Ponty)
Prima mondiale

SYNOPSIS | Today is the last day of his life. He knows this to be true even though he is strong and healthy. Nonetheless Satché (played by American actor-musician Saül Williams) accepts his imminent death. Walking through the streets of his home town in Senegal he takes in the sites of his past as if he were looking at them for the last time: his parents’ house, his first love, the friends of his youth, his wife and children. Time and again he hears the same reproach: why didn’t he stay in America, where he would have a future? Satché encounters his final moments full of fear but also with a sense of joy.
In his film, director Alain Gomis takes a well-worn topic in Senegalese cinema and turns it on its head: unlike other films, many of which choose to focus on emigration and neo-colonialism, Gomis’ work instead tells the story of a man who leaves America to return to the land of his birth. At first Satché’s fellow-Senegalese accompany him lovingly and treat him almost as if he were a saint, but as the day continues Satché discovers how malicious and greedy they can be. Several of the romantic memories he harboured from a distance turn out to be banal when he is face to face with them; nonetheless Satché’s encounter with this reality manages to bring him peace.

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Bai lu yuan (White Deer Plain)
regia: Wang Quan’an | Cina – 2011 – 188′
cast: Zhang Fengyi, Zhang Yuqi, Wu Gang
produzione: Bai Lu Yuan Film Company (Pechino)
Prima mondiale

SYNOPSIS | Wang Quan’an’s epic takes place towards the end of imperial China in a period of dramatic political and social upheaval. The film is set in the eponymous White Deer Village in Shaanxi Province where the two most important families – Bai and Lu – and their sons have always lived together in peace. But the turmoil leads to a fierce struggle for land ownership. A young woman new to the village soon finds herself caught between the two camps. Director Wang Quan’an uses the story of these two families as a metaphor for the fate of the Chinese people as first Chinese war lords are overrun by Japanese invaders, then civil war follows hot on the heels of the Second World War and finally the victorious Maoists begin waving their red flags.
BAI LU YUAN is an adaptation of an historical novel of the same name by Chen Zhongshi which was blacklisted for many years on account of its explicit sex scenes. As in his earlier works TUYA’S MARRIAGE (which won the Golden Bear in 2006) and APART TOGETHER (which screened at the Berlinale in 2010) Wang Quan’an’s new work focuses once again on the fortunes of a female protagonist. Using her beauty as a way of gaining influence and a means of survival, the heroine of his latest film nonetheless manages to remain true to herself and those she loves.

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Barbara
regia: Christian Petzold | Germania – 2012 – 105′
cast: Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld, Rainer Bock, Christina Hecke
produzione: Schramm Film Koerner & Weber (Berlino)
Prima mondiale

SYNOPSIS | Summer in the GDR in 1980. Barbara, a doctor, has submitted an application to emigrate to the West. She is punished by being posted away from the capital to a hospital in a small town. Jörg, her lover in the West, is busy planning her escape via the Baltic Sea. It’s a waiting game for Barbara. Her new flat, the neighbours, summer and the countryside no longer hold any charms for her. Although she is attentive to her young patients in the department for paediatric surgery under her new boss, André, she is deliberately cool to her colleagues. Her life, she thinks, will begin later.
André confuses her. First there’s his unshakable faith in her professional abilities, then there’s way he cares, and his winning smile. What makes him cover up for her when she helps Stella, a young runaway? Is he spying on her? Is he in love? Barbara begins to lose her grip on herself, her plans and her heart. The day of her planned escape approaches. After GESPENSTER (2005) and YELLA (2007) this marks Christian Petzold’s third outing in the Berlinale’s Competition programme. His new work once again centres on a woman who seems to drift through life like a phantom. Hers is a life in which the fear of surveillance seems to be firmly embedded in all interpersonal relationships.

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Captive
regia: Brillante Mendoza | Francia/Filippine/UK – 2011 – 102′
cast: Isabelle Huppert, Katherine Mulville, Marc Zanetta, Maria Isabel Lopez, Rustica Carpio
produzione: Swift Productions (Parigi)
Prima mondiale

SYNOPSIS | A group of armed and masked men belonging to the Muslim Abu Sayyaf group burst into a hotel on an island resort and kidnap twelve foreign guests. The attack was intended to target employees of the World Bank, but they have already left the resort. The abductees are tourists and Christian missionaries who are now forced on a gruelling foot march through the Philippine jungle. Together, the hostages and the kidnappers find themselves having to cope with the trials of nature; gradually, the climate of fear, prejudice and hatred evolves into a strange, symbiotic relationship. The contours begin to blur, certainties are called into question. Nothing seems to be the same any more…
As in his earlier work, Brillante Mendoza once again invites the viewer of CAPTIVE to enter the extremely ambivalent inner world of a huis clos. Taking the viewer hostage as it were, the film creates a sensibility for a series of existential threats posed by humans and nature alike and also explores with eerie magic real and spiritual ways out of the crisis. Based on historical events that occurred in 2001, the film was shot in real locations with a cast of nonprofessionals and actors.

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Cesare deve morire (Caesar Must Die)
regia: Paolo e Vittorio Taviani | Italia – 2011 – 76′
cast: Cosimo Rega, Salvatore Striano, Giovanni Arcuri, Antonio Frasca
produzione: Kaos Cinematografica (Roma)
Prima mondiale

SYNOPSIS | The performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar comes to an end and the performers are rewarded with rapturous applause. The lights go out; the actors leave the stage and return to their cells. They are all inmates of the Roman maximum security prison Rebibbia. One of them comments: ‘Ever since I discovered art this cell has truly become a prison’.
Filmmakers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani spent six months following rehearsals for this stage production; their film demonstrates how the universality of Shakespeare’s language helps the actors to understand their roles and immerse themselves in the bard’s interplay of friendship and betrayal, power, dishonesty and violence. This documentary does not dwell on the crimes these men have committed in their ‘real’ lives; rather, it draws parallels between this classical drama and the world of today, describes the commitment displayed by all those involved and shows how their personal hopes and fears also flow into the performance.
After the premiere the cell doors slam shut behind Caesar, Brutus and the others. These men all feel proud and strangely touched, as if the play has somehow revealed to them the depths of their own personal history.

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Csak a szél (Just The Wind)
regia: Bence Fliegauf | Ungheria/Germania/Francia – 2012 – 91′
cast: Lajos Sárkány, Katalin Toldi, Gyöngyi Lendvai, György Toldi
produzione: Inforg M&M Film (Budapest)
Prima mondiale

SYNOPSIS | News quickly spreads of the murder of a Romany family in a Hungarian village. The perpetrators have escaped and nobody claims to know who might have committed the crime. For another Romany family living close by, the murder only serves to confirm their latent, carefully repressed fears. Far away in Canada the head of the family decides that his wife, children and their grandfather must join him as soon as possible. Living in fear of the racist terror that surrounds them and feeling abandoned by the silent majority, the family tries to get through the day after the attack. By nightfall when darkness descends on the village the family pushes the beds closer together than usual. Yet their hope of escaping the madness proves illusory.
Based on an actual series of killings in Hungary that claimed the lives of eight people in less than a year, Bence Fliegauf portrays the pogrom-like atmosphere which breeds such violence. The camera stays hot on the heels of the protagonists, making the breathless escalation of events physically palpable.

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Dictado (Childish Games)
regia: Antonio Chavarrías | Spagna – 2011 – 95′
cast: Juan Diego Botto, Bárbara Lennie, Mágica Pérez
produzione: Oberon Cinematográfica (Barcellona)
Prima mondiale

SYNOPSIS | When flaky novelist Mario turns up one day at the school where Daniel teaches, the educator is convinced the writer is a spirit from his repressed past, buried deep in his subconscious. As children, the two might almost have been brothers. But the marriage between Daniel’s father and Mario’s mother never materialised.
This unexpected re-encounter brings both families together. When Mario slits his wrists and dies, Daniel and his wife Laura provide a home for the dead man’s daughter. Laura, who is childless, loves the girl from the moment they meet, but Daniel feels increasingly nervous around her. The demons of his past guilt continue to torment him. Daniel suffers agonies – until things come to a head during a show down in the mountains…
Spanish director Antonio Chavarrías’ work toys with the conventions of the psychological thriller. With its haunting music, surreal dream sequences and earthy-coloured natural locations, this disconcerting, fragmentary fable creates an ominous atmosphere that reveals the director’s debt to masterful cineaste, Alfred Hitchcock.

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En Kongelig Affære (A Royal Affair)
regia: Nikolaj Arcel | Danimarca/Repubblica Ceca/Svezia/Germania – 2012 – 137′
cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Alicia Vikander, Trine Dyrholm, David Dencik, Mikkel Boe Følsgaard
produzione: Zentropa Productions2 (Hvidovre)
Prima mondiale

SYNOPSIS | Johann Friedrich Struensee, town physician and doctor to the poor of Altona – then governed by the King of Denmark – accompanies his monarch in 1768 on the latter’s year-long trip around Europe. During the journey, he gains the trust of the psychologically unstable king and is made his personal physician. But Struensee wants more: together with Queen Caroline Mathilde, who falls in love with the handsome and assertive medic, he increasingly takes over state affairs. Committed to the grand ideas of European enlightenment, he implements freedom of the press and of expression, abolishes torture and serfdom, reforms the school system and curtails the privileges of the aristocracy.
The aristocrats, however, fearing for their wealth and power, refuse to take this ‘blasphemous activity’ lying down. Eventually, the reformer ends up on trial.
Based on actual historical events, Nikolaj Arcel creates a mixture of historical-political thriller, romance and tragedy. The drama of a man decades ahead of his time who seeks to implement the ideals of the French Revolution in Denmark before it even began is also an allegory about the conflict of progressive and reactionary forces.

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Gnade (Mercy)
regia: Matthias Glasner | Germania/Norvegia – 2012 – 132′
cast: Jürgen Vogel, Birgit Minichmayr, Henry Stange, Ane Dahl Torp, Maria Bock
produzione: Knudsen & Streuber Medienmanufaktur (Berlino), Schwarzweiss Filmproduktion (Berlino), Ophir Film- und Fernsehproduktion (Berlino)
Prima mondiale

SYNOPSIS | Hammerfest is a Norwegian town on the edge of the Arctic Ocean at the country’s most north westerly tip. Between 22 November and 21 January the sun doesn’t even make it over the horizon. This small town caught in an icy reverie somewhere between black night and permanent twilight is now home to a German couple and their son. Niels is an engineer working at a natural gas liquefying plant based on a tiny island opposite Hammerfest. Maria, a nurse at a hospice for the fatally ill, has decided to join her husband here to support this important career move. The couple seems to have adapted well to this shadowy and sometimes surreal nocturnal world. But one day on her way home from work Maria is involved in an accident; she appears to have run over someone or something. Unable to face up to the situation, she panics and rushes back home. As events take their course this throws up some fundamental questions: is it possible to live your life without mercy or the ability to forgive? An intimate melodrama, told in stunningly cinematic images.

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Jayne Mansfield’s Car
regia: Billy Bob Thornton | Russia/USA – 2011 – 122′
cast: Billy Bob Thornton, Robert Duvall, John Hurt, Kevin Bacon, Robert Patrick
produzione: Media Talent Group (Los Angeles)
Prima mondiale

SYNOPSIS | An ensemble drama about families, JAYNE MANSFIELD’S CAR looks at two colourful clans in 1969. Brought together by the death of a woman who was married, first to the Southern American Jim Caldwell (Robert Duvall) and then to the British Kingsley Bedford (John Hurt), Naomi’s families meet for the first time at the Caldwells’ Alabama home with uneasy curiosity. The culture clash of the Nineteen Sixties, and of the Old World versus the Old South, become a backdrop for the Caldwells’ and the Bedfords’ heartfelt and sometimes hilarious struggles with long-held resentments, family rivalries and secrets, and the memories of war and how it shaped three generations of fathers and sons.
The acclaimed cast also includes Billy Bob Thornton, Kevin Bacon, Robert Patrick, Ray Stevenson, Katherine LaNasa and Frances O’Connor. Writer/director/actor/musician Billy Bob Thornton received an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for his film SLING BLADE and has been nominated for three additional Academy Awards. This film marks Russian producer Alexander Rodnyansky’s first English-language project, his INNOCENT SATURDAY having screened in the Berlinale’s Competition program in 2011, and THE SUN in 2005.

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Kebun binatang (Postcards From The Zoo)
regia: Edwin | Indonesia/Germania/Hong Kong/Cina – 2012 – 97′
cast: Ladya Cheryl, Nicholas Saputra
produzione: Babibutafilm (Djakarta)
Prima mondiale

SYNOPSIS | The zoo – a place of yearning. The zoo animals are yearning for freedom and many of the visitors long for adventure and the call of the wild. It is in these surroundings, where imagining yourself into other world is easy, that Lana grows up. When she was a little girl, her father left her behind in the colourful Jakarta zoo to be raised by zoo keepers. What dreams and longings does a young woman have who has grown up among giraffes, elephants and hippos? Is the cowboy who appears one day and is able to do magic merely a wish summoned into solid form, or is he real? Lana will assist him, and take her first steps outside her familiar world. But as suddenly as he appeared, the cowboy will disappear again by magic. On her own now, Lana begins to work as a masseuse at a spa. But the memory of the cowboy and nostalgia for the seemingly enchanted zoo will not leave her alone.
As with Edwin’s internationally acclaimed directorial debut, THE BLIND PIG WHO WANTS TO FLY, the tone of new work POSTCARDS FROM THE ZOO has the feel of being similarly suspended in a strange limbo. A film which surrenders itself to the sense of longing it conveys.

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L’enfant d’en haut (Sister)
regia: Ursula Meier | Svizzera/Francia – 2012 – 97′
cast: Léa Seydoux, Kacey Mottet Klein, Martin Compston, Gillian Anderson
produzione: Archipel 35 (Parigi), Vega Film (Zurigo)
Prima mondiale

SYNOPSIS | A luxury ski resort in Switzerland.
12-year-old Simon lives in the industrial valley below, with his jobless sister, Louise. Every day, he takes the ski-lift to the opulent ski world above, stealing equipment from the rich tourists to resell to the local kids back down. As he partners with a crooked British seasonal worker, Simon loses his boundaries, which affects the relationship with his sister. Confronted with a truth they had both been escaping, Simon seeks refuge up above.
Ursula Meier sets her second feature-length drama against the backdrop of a popular tourist destination in the Alps. From the broad, anonymous mass of people, she has distilled the story of one child who believes he has found a way to offset his breadline existence. This portrait of a boy on the brink of puberty, poised between deceit and an unquenchable need for love and tenderness, is at the same time an exploration of the contradictions and hidden depths of an ostensibly prosperous world.

▪ Leggi la recensione del precedente film di Ursula Meier, Home (2008), a cura di Roberto Rippa

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Les adieux à la Reine (Farewell My Queen)
regia: Benoït Jacquot | France/Spain – 2011 – 100′
cast: Léa Seydoux, Diane Kruger, Virginie Ledoyen, Xavier Beauvois, Noemie Lvovsky
produzione: GMT Productions (Boulogne), Les Films du Lendemain (Parigi), Morena Films (Madrid)
Prima mondiale

SYNOPSIS | Versailles in July 1789. There’s growing disquiet at the court of King Louis XVI: the people are defiant and the country is on the brink of revolution. Behind the scenes at the royal palaces emergency plans are being made. Although nobody believes that this spells the end of the established order everyone is talking of escape, including Queen Marie Antoinette and her entourage. One of Marie Antoinette’s ladies-in-waiting is Sidonie Laborde who, as the Queen’s reader, is a member of the monarch’s inner circle. Concerned that her escape might fail, the queen gives instructions for the girl to step into her carriage dressed in the queen’s clothes while the queen herself is to escape from the palace unseen at night. At first Sidonie is proud to have such an honour bestowed upon her – but she soon realises that her mistress’ request has nothing to do with her affection for her.
Based on Chantal Thomas’ award-winning novel of the same name, Benoït Jacquot’s film portrays the early days of the French Revolution as seen through the eyes of the servants at Versailles. An historical drama with ironic overtones that also draws parallels to the present.

▪ Leggi la recensione del film Au fond des bois (2010) di Benoït Jacquot a cura di Roberto Rippa
▪ Leggi la recensione del film L’intouchable (2006) di Benoït Jacquot a cura di Roberto Rippa

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Metéora (Meteora)
regia: Spiros Stathoulopoulos | Germania/Grecia – 2012 – 82′
cast: Theo Alexander, Tamila Koulieva
produzione: Essential Filmproduktion (Berlino)
Prima mondiale

SYNOPSIS | In the hot plains of central Greece, the Orthodox monasteries of Metéora are perched atop sandstone pillars, suspended between heaven and earth. Down in the valley, the eternal cycles of farm life – birth, milking, slaughter – provide a stark contrast to their ascetic world. The young monk Theodoros and the nun Urania have devoted their lives to the strict rituals and practices of their community. A growing affection for one another puts their monastic life under question. Torn between spiritual devotion and their human desire, they must decide which path to follow.

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Rebelle (War Witch)
regia: Kim Nguyen | Canada – 2012 – 90′
cast: Rachel Mwanza, Alain Bastien, Serge Kanyinda, Ralph Prosper, Mizinga Mwinga
produzione: Item 7 inc (Montreal)
Prima mondiale

SYNOPSIS | A civil war in Africa. After her village is burned down by rebels and her parents are killed, Komona is forced into the jungle as a child soldier. Her brutal commander not only trains her in the use of arms but also orders her to sleep with him. Searching for shelter amidst the horror, she turns to a slightly older boy with white hair who she calls ‘Magician’ and falls in love with. After they escape from the camp together, Komona does her utmost to return to her village. She wants to bury her parents to prevent them having to eternally wander the wasted land as ghosts…
Told throughout from the perspective of an adolescent girl, the film – shot in authentic locations in Congo and cast mainly with non-professional actors – visualises the horrors of civil war and the suffering of children and civilians. Realistic images are interspersed with dream sequences which are rooted in African legends and which resonate with infinite grief about hardship and misery. Despite all the horrors she encounters, Komona proves to be a beacon of hope for a continent yearning for peace and humanity.

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Tabu
regia: Miguel Gomes | Portogallo/Germania/Brasile/Francia – 2012 – 119′
cast: Teresa Madruga, Laura Soveral, Ana Moreira, Carloto Cotta
produzione: O Som e a Fúria (Lisbona)
Prima mondiale

SYNOPSIS | Aurora, an elderly Portuguese woman and her Cap Verdean housekeeper live next door to Pilar, who has made it her aim in life to do good.
Not that she receives any gratitude for her efforts – and certainly not from the notoriously mistrustful Aurora, who prefers to spend her remaining years losing her meagre savings at the tables of Estoril casino. When the old lady dies, Pilar gets on the track of an old lover.
Making a film without referring to film history is unthinkable for director Miguel Gomes, and it’s no coincidence that his film has the same title as Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s TABU. In his third feature film outing Gomes playfully interprets and rearranges historical events: whilst the first part of his film is in black-and-white and portrays a society wallowing in nostalgia, the second part delivers everything they long for: stirring melodrama, slapstick, juxtaposition and passion.

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Was bleibt (Home For The Weekend)
regia: Hans-Christian Schmid | Germania – 2012 – 84′
cast: Lars Eidinger, Corinna Harfouch, Sebastian Zimmler, Ernst Stötzner, Picco von Groote
produzione: 23/5 Filmproduktion GmbH (Berlino)
Prima mondiale

SYNOPSIS | Marko is in his early thirties. Ever since he finished college he’s lived in Berlin – just far enough away from his parents Gitte and Günter whose middle-class way of life really isn’t his thing. He pays them a visit once or twice a year, mostly to let them spend a few days together with their grandchild, Marko’s five-year old son, Zowie.
Marko is looking forward to a relatively quite weekend in the small town where his parents live. But there’s news: Gitte, who has been bipolar since Marko’s childhood, announces that a homeopathic treatment has made her feel better than she has done in years. She’s decided to do away with her medication and is now looking forward to sharing the rest of her life with her husband. Gitte’s unexpected recovery thwarts Günter’s own plans.
Marko’s younger brother Jakob and his partner Ella also find themselves at a crossroads. Whilst Jakob is prepared to spend his life close to his parents – especially to his mother Gitte – Ella is hoping to pursue a career abroad. Marko acts as a catalyst; his presence provokes a confrontation with unspoken truths which causes the façade of harmonious family life to fall to pieces.

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Bel Ami
regia: Declan Donnellan, Nick Ormerod | UK – 2011 – 102′
cast: Robert Pattinson, Uma Thurman, Kristin Scott Thomas, Christina Ricci, Colm Meaney
produzione: Red Wave Films (Londra)
Prima mondiale

SYNOPSIS | After two years of military service in North Africa ex-sergeant Georges Duroy is now living an impoverished existence in Paris. Willing to do anything to escape his grubby room in the suburbs and, increasingly unscrupulous, he mercilessly exploits influential comrades-in-arms and wealthy women to work his way up the social ladder and into the late nineteenth-century capital’s chicest urbane circles. Sanguine and calculating, he storms bastions of power in the speculative colonial stock-market meanwhile indulging in amorous adventures in the luxurious establishments of the nouveau riche. Paris it seems has been waiting for a man of such dubious political, moral and erotic pursuits…
After several successful adaptations – including Willi Forst’s 1938 version and Louis Daquin’s 1955 interpretation – Bel-Ami Guy de Maupassant’s socially critical novel of 1885 returns to the screen once more. Carefully following the original literary work, Director Declan Donnellan portrays a careerist upstart who ruthlessly exploits the entanglement of politics, economics, media and his private life to his own ends. A glamorous and sarcastic comedy of manners about hypocrisy as one of the fundamental laws in a bourgeois era.

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Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close (Extrem laut und unglaublich nah)
regia: Stephen Daldry | USA – 2011 – 129′
cast: Thomas Horn, Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, Max von Sydow
produzione: Scott Rudin Productions, c/o Warner Bros. Pictures Germany
Prima internazionale

SYNOPSIS | Oskar Schell is an alert nine-year-old boy. Like so many other New Yorkers September 9, 2001 is the worst day of his young life because this is the day his father dies in the World Trade Center. The boy discovers a key among his father’s possessions and, believing this to be his only way of maintaining some connection with his beloved father, he begins a furtive search for the corresponding lock. Working systematically he approaches 472 people with the surname Black – any one of them could be the owner of the key. He is accompanied on his odyssey across New York by a mysterious old man who has rented a room at Oskar’s grandmother’s place. Oskar suspects that this man is none other than his German-born grandfather, but the old boy refuses to say one word…
Stephen Daldry’s film is an adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s best-selling novel of the same name. As the director of THE HOURS and THE READER, Daldry is no stranger to literary adaptations. EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE is both a coming-of-age story and a declaration of love to a magical place and its inhabitants.

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Flying Swords Of Dragon Gate
regia: Tsui Hark | Hong Kong/Cina – 2011 – 122′
cast: Jet Li, Zhou Xun, Chen Kun, Kwai Lun Mei
produzione: Film Workshop Company (Hong Kong)
Prima europea – 3D

SYNOPSIS | Top martial arts proponents showcase their talents in this cinematic hurricane. China at the end of the Ming Dynasty: corrupt eunuchs are terrorising the country with the ‘Western Office’ under Commander Yu leading the way. In rebel fighter Zhao Huai’ an (Jet Li), the ruthless warlord meets his adversary. Good and evil clash at the Dragon Gate Inn, joined by a group of hard-drinking Mongolian tribal warriors. When a sandstorm exposes the golden treasures of an ancient metropolis beneath the inn, more material interests come into play. Shot in 3D, Hong Kong based director Tsui Hark creates a blazing piece of Eastern genre cinema reminiscent of the Shaw Brothers’ classics. In a whirlwind of special effects where people are made to appear like flying spirits, the film portrays two Chinese folk tales about flying swords, magic powers and a romantic love story.

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Haywire
regia: Steven Soderbergh | USA – 2011 – 93′
cast: Gina Carano, Channing Tatum, Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor, Michael Angarano, Antonio Banderas, Michael Douglas
produzione: Relativity Media (Los Angeles)
Prima tedesca

SYNOPSIS | Steven Soderbergh’s action thriller HAYWIRE is a fast-paced piece of genre filmmaking. In this new work, Gina Carano plays Agent Mallory Kane on a worldwide mission. Kane is employed by the American government. No sooner does she bring a hostage drama in Barcelona to a successful end than she is betrayed and almost killed by one of her own colleagues during her next assignment in Dublin. In order to protect herself and her family, she must find out which of her own people was behind the attack. As the net tightens, America’s ’most dangerous weapon’ finds herself up against the most daunting male agents on the planet.
A star of the mixed martial arts world, leading lady Gina Carano performs all of her own stunts and blazes a trail through enemy lines. Her path takes her down streets and over rooftops, through hotel complexes and across the docklands of Europe.

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Jin líng Shi San Chai (The Flowers Of War)
regia: Zhang Yimou | Cina – 2011 – 141′
cast: Christian Bale, Ni Ni, Atsuro Watabe
produzione: Beijing New Picture Film (Pechino)
Prima europea

SYNOPSIS | Nanking in 1937. The Japanese invasion plunges the Chinese capital into chaos and destruction. A group of schoolgirls manage to reach relative safety behind the walls of Winchester Cathedral, where they hide in the cellar. An American named John Miller also finds refuge in the cathedral, as do thirteen prostitutes from a nearby brothel. When the Japanese attack the building, the schoolgirls narrowly escape rape as a result of Miller’s valiant intervention. Initially only interested in the convent’s stores of wine and cash, Miller gradually takes on the role of protector. When the schoolgirls are ordered to ‘sing’ at a Japanese celebration, their lives are saved by a ruse: the prostitutes don the schoolgirls’ uniforms and go in their place – in spite of the fact that this means certain death.
Top Chinese director Zhang Yimou is a frequent guest at the Berlinale. Based on Yang Geling’s novel 13 Flowers of Nanjing about the Nanking massacre director Yimou latest work adapts for the screen a tragic chapter in China’s history which claimed the lives of approximately 200,000 people.

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Shadow Dancer
regia: James Marsh | UK/Irlanda – 2012 – 100′
cast: Clive Owen, Andrea Riseborough, Gillian Anderson, Aidan Gillem
produzione: Unanimous Entertainment (Londra)
Prima europea

SYNOPSIS | Even as a child, Collette was to experience at first hand the bloody consequences of the conflict in Northern Ireland when her little brother was killed by British security forces. Years later, Collette is herself now a mother and, like the rest of her family, still involved in the Republican cause. When she is arrested for her part in an aborted IRA bomb plot in London, a British secret service officer offers her a choice: lose everything including her little son and go to prison for twenty-five years or return to Belfast to spy on her own family. SHADOW DANCER is a psychological thriller in the truest sense of the term: it does not merely focus on the external elements of the plot; it also explores the moral dilemmas that face its protagonists. When the secret service man begins to worry about Collette’s safety she decides to feign interest in the agent – a duplicitous, risky game. Director James Marsh depicts the conflict in Northern Ireland from the point of view of a woman whose daily life is a constant struggle for survival but who is nonetheless determined to create a better future for herself and her son.

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The Iron Lady
regia: Phyllida Lloyd | UK – 2011 – 104′
cast: Meryl Streep, Jim Broadbent, Olivia Colman, Roger Allam, Susan Brown
produzione: DJ Films (Londra)
Prima tedesca

SYNOPSIS | Academy Award winning actor Meryl Streep as Britain’s ‘iron lady’. Margaret Roberts comes from a modest background. Her father, a lay Methodist preacher, runs a grocers’ shop where she sometimes helps out as a young girl. Margaret inherits her father’s interest in politics and the ability to inspire others. Later, as a grown woman, this complete outsider succeeds in gaining entry into the male-dominated political establishment and, at the height of her career, Margaret, now Mrs Thatcher, succeeds in securing the top job of Britain’s prime minister. Learning quickly from her early mistakes, she improves her rhetorical skills and, following her closest advisers, even agrees to make changes to her personal appearance. She remains unflinchingly loyal however to her political course – whether battling unions or entering into war with Argentina over the Falklands. And through it all, her likeable, humorous husband Denis is her indispensable ‘rock’. After his death, Lady Thatcher, now suffering from dementia, often holds forth to Denis, who lives on in her memory. Meryl Streep has been awarded a Golden Globe for her performance in the role of Margaret Thatcher.

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BERLINALE 62 | SHORT – Programma cortometraggi