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Last year’s edition of the Berlin Film Festival was pretty much the last major film festival to go up before the entire world shut down in the wake of the COVID-19 panic. With current infection levels still too high to make a physical festival possible, co-directors Carlo Chatrian and Mariette Rissenbeek, now in their second year in those positions, were forced to go the way of most of the other festivals during the last 12 months and present this year’s installment in a virtual edition with the intention of having public screenings of the films in the lineup during this summer, if all goes well. As a result, the glitzier aspects that one might ordinarily find at such an event red carpet galas, press conferences and the like were nowhere to be seen. ....
Berlinale: Teddy Awards Lineup Offers a Surprising Cross-Section of New Queer Cinema Guy Lodge, provided by FacebookTwitterEmail Now in its 35th year, the Teddy Awards are among the Berlinale’s most affectionately regarded institutions. Presented annually to standout LGBTQ-themed titles across the festival’s entire lineup, they have a looser, hipper, more inclusive reputation than other Berlin prizes: fittingly, they’re annually presented not at an exclusive black-tie affair, but a publicly accessible ceremony followed by an almighty dance-’til-dawn party. Yet the Teddys’ prestige survives their informality. Surveying their list of past winners, it’s notable how many defining queer works have been recognized along the way: from Pedro Almodóvar’s “Law of Desire” (the inaugural winner, in 1987) to Cheryl Dunye’s “The Watermelon Woman,” from Derek Jarman’s “The Last of England” to John Cameron Mitchell’s “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,� ....
How Jeffrey Epstein Inspired Dasha Nekrasova s Twisted Psychosexual Thriller The Scary of Sixty-First Rebecca Rubin, provided by FacebookTwitterEmail That’s the premise of Dasha Nekrasova’s provocative directorial debut “The Scare of Sixty-First.” More from Variety It’s a subject of intense interest to Nekrasova, an actor and host of the podcast “Red Scare,” who recalls living near the Metropolitan Correctional Center where Epstein was found dead in August of 2019. His presence, however unwelcome, loomed large over the city, and she found herself deep in an internet rabbit hole about conspiracy theories relating to Epstein’s demise. She became deeply suspicious of the true nature of his death, which was ruled a suicide with investigators saying the businessman strangled himself with his bed sheet. (In the movie, Nekrasova’s character attempts to recreate the strangulation to prove her theory.) ....
Loveling Director Gustavo Pizzi on Berlinale Series Standout The Last Days of Gilda Emiliano Granada, provided by FacebookTwitterEmail One thing’s clear from the 2021 Berlin Film Festival’s get-go: Its Berlinale Series strand grows stronger every year, and features for the first time two Latin America series which underscore the creative excitement of the limited miniseries format. “The Last Days Of Gilda,” Gustavo Pizzi and star Karine Teles’ adaptation of the same-titled stage play by Rodrigo de Roure is in its style, a playful portrayal of a woman trapped in a political and social tsunami now storming Brazil. More from Variety ....
Watch the First Trailer for Berlin Panorama Player All Eyes Off Me (EXCLUSIVE) Jamie Lang, provided by FacebookTwitterEmail 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. Max, however, has other things on his mind and is with his new girlfriend, trying to live up to her violent sexual fantasies for the two of them. She wants to be hit and choked, which leaves her bruised when she visits an older man for whom she dog sits. ....