Berlinale Reveals Encounters, Panorama & Perspektive Deutsches Kino Selections

Tom Grater
·9 min read

Day 3 of this year’s Berlinale announcements contain the line-ups for Encounters, Panorama and Perspektive Deutsches Kino. Check back in tomorrow for the Competition program.

Encounters was first introduced at last year’s festival to support new voices in cinema. A three-member jury will award Best Film, Best Director and a Special Jury Award during the industry event in March, with the prizes handed out physically at the summer event.

More from Deadline

The selection consists of 12 titles from 16 countries, including seven debuts. Scroll down for the full list.

Over in Panorama, there are 19 titles including 14 world premieres. Several titles arrive from Sundance such as Prano Bailey-Bond’s UK feature Censor and Ronny Trocker’s Human Factors.

Perspektive Deutsches Kino will again present new views on German cinema, with six titles, all of which are world premieres. The full lists are below.

This week so far has seen the Generation, Retrospective, Forum, Forum Expanded and Shorts programs announced.

As previously reported, buyers will get the chance to view these movies during the virtual EFM, which runs March 1-5. Juries will also be appointed to decide on the festival’s awards during this period. Audiences will hopefully have a chance to see the movies in cinemas during a planned summer event in June.

Encounters

As I Want
Egypt / France / Norway / Palestine
by Samaher Alqadi
*World premiere / Documentary form / Debut film

Azor
Switzerland / France / Argentina
by Andreas Fontana
with Fabrizio Rongione, Stéphanie Cléau
*World premiere / Debut film

The Beta Test
USA / United Kingdom
by Jim Cummings, PJ McCabe
with Jim Cummings, Virginia Newcomb, PJ McCabe
*World premiere

Blutsauger (Bloodsuckers)
Germany
by Julian Radlmaier
with Alexandre Koberidze, Lilith Stangenberg, Alexander Herbst, Corinna Harfouch
*World premiere

Hygiène sociale (Social Hygiene)
Canada
by Denis Côté
with Maxim Gaudette, Larissa Corriveau, Eleonore Loiselle
*World premiere

Das Mädchen und die Spinne (The Girl and the Spider)
Switzerland
by Ramon Zürcher, Silvan Zürcher
with Henriette Confurius, Liliane Amuat, Ursina Lardi
*World premiere

Mantagheye payani (District Terminal)
Iran / Germany
by Bardia Yadegari, Ehsan Mirhosseini
with Bardia Yadegari, Farideh Azadi, Ali Hemmati
*World premiere / Debut film

Moon, 66 Questions
Greece / France
by Jacqueline Lentzou
with Sofia Kokkali, Lazaros Georgakopoulos
*World premiere / Debut film

Nous (We)
France
by Alice Diop
with Ismael Soumaïla Sissoko, N’deye Sighane Diop, Pierre Bergounioux
*World premiere / Documentary form

Rock Bottom Riser
USA
by Fern Silva
*World premiere / Experimental film / Debut film

The Scary of Sixty-First
USA
by Dasha Nekrasova
with Betsey Brown, Madeline Quinn, Dasha Nekrasova
*World premiere / Debut film

Vị (Taste)
Vietnam / Singapore / France / Thailand / Germany /Taiwan
by Lê Bảo
with Olegunleko Ezekiel Gbenga, Thi Minh Nga Khuong, Thi Dung Le
*World premiere / Debut film

Panorama

Censor
United Kingdom
by Prano Bailey-Bond
with Niamh Algar, Michael Smiley, Nicholas Burns, Vincent Franklin, Sophia La Porta
Debut film

Viewing a horror movie awakens film censor Enid’s trauma about the disappearance of her sister. She decides to track down the film and its director and begins a quest in which the boundaries between fiction and reality begin to blur.

Death of a Virgin, and the Sin of Not Living
Lebanon
by George Peter Barbari
with Etienne Assal, Adnan Khabbaz, Jean Paul Frangieh, Elias Saad, Feyrouz Abi Hassan, Souraya Baghdadi
*World premiere / Debut film

A group of friends pool their money to pay for their first sex. Their journey to see a sex worker is accompanied by boastful teenage conversations, but also sensitive inner monologues. A painful collision between poetry and social reality.

Dirty Feathers
USA / Mexico
by Carlos Alfonso Corral
*World premiere / Debut film / Panorama Dokumente

On the streets of border towns El Paso and Ciudad Juárez we meet people living without a home. In intimate, unbiased black-and-white images, the film captures their everyday lives on the streets, as well as their hopes and their faith.

Genderation
Germany
by Monika Treut
*World premiere / Panorama Dokumente

20 years after Gendernauts, Monika Treut seeks out the pioneers of the transgender movement back then to find out how their lives and their activism have evolved, how they have grown into their identities and how their energy continues to have an impact today.

Glück (Bliss)
Germany
by Henrika Kull
with Katharina Behrens, Adam Hoya, Nele Kayenberg, Jean-Luc Bubert
*World premiere

Two sex workers meet in a Berlin brothel. In a place where the female body is a commodity, they experience moments of happiness. A feisty love story about attraction, fears and self-determination.

Kelti (Celts)
Serbia
by Milica Tomović
with Dubravka Kovjanić, Stefan Trifunović, Katarina Dimić, Anja Đorđević
*World premiere / Debut film

Belgrade in 1993. The pent-up tension of uncertain times is released at a children’s birthday party. While the kids celebrate in the living room dressed up as Ninja Turtles, the adults discuss, flirt, smoke and drink in the kitchen.

Der menschliche Faktor (Human Factors)
Germany / Italy / Denmark
by Ronny Trocker
with Mark Waschke, Sabine Timoteo, Jule Hermann, Wanja Valentin Kube

Jan accepts an assignment for a political campaign without consulting Nina, who is both his wife and partner in their agency. Their family holiday is overshadowed by a mysterious break-in. A psychological portrait of a family, told from different perspectives.

Miguel’s War
Lebanon / Germany / Spain
by Eliane Raheb
*World premiere / Panorama Dokumente

A portrait of a gay man who confronts the ghosts of his past. After fleeing war and repression 37 years ago, Miguel returns to Lebanon where he traces hidden longings, unrequited love and tormenting feelings of guilt.

Mishehu Yohav Mishehu (All Eyes Off Me)
Israel
by Hadas Ben Aroya
with Elisheva Weil, Yoav Hait, Leib Lev Levin, Hadar Katz
*World premiere

Danny is pregnant by Max who is busy trying out Avishag’s sexual fantasies with her. She wants him to hit her when they have sex. Avishag takes her bruises to Dror, whose dog she sits. A generational portrait that asks: how liberated are we really?

Le monde après nous (The World After Us)
France
by Louda Ben Salah-Cazanas
with Aurélien Gabrielli, Louise Chevillotte, Saadia Bentaïeb, Jacques Nolot
*World premiere / Debut film

When penniless young writer Labidi meets Elisa he knows she’s the one for him. But Paris is expensive. A captivating film that combines the classic themes of French New Wave cinema with questions about roots, familiarity and distance.

Night Raiders
Canada / New Zealand
by Danis Goulet
with Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, Brooklyn Letexier-Hart, Alex Tarrant, Amanda Plummer
*World premiere / Debut film

In a dystopian future, children are considered property of the military regime which trains them to fight in a state boarding school. A Cree woman tries to get her daughter back. A parable about the situation of the First Nations, seen from a female perspective.

North By Current
USA
by Angelo Madsen Minax
*World premiere / Panorama Dokumente

The unexplained death of his niece leads the director back to his family. His investigation of injustice and the arbitrariness of officialdom turns into cathartic family therapy. A personal essay about motherhood, grieving and transgender masculinity.

Okul Tıraşı (Brother’s Keeper)
Turkey / Romania
by Ferit Karahan
with Samet Yıldız, Ekin Koç, Mahir İpek, Melih Selçuk, Cansu Fırıncı, Nurullah Alaca
*World premiere

A finely spun drama set in the microcosm of an authoritarian boarding school in the Anatolian mountains. One winter’s day reveals the failure of this powerful educational institution to which twelve-year-old Yusuf and his friend are helplessly exposed.

Souad
Egypt / Tunisia / Germany
by Ayten Amin
with Bassant Ahmed, Basmala Elghaiesh, Hussein Ghanem
*World premiere

Egyptian Souad, 19, has several identities: one on social media, others as a diligent student and an obedient daughter. When Souad’s ideas of a self-determined life are shattered, her younger sister sets out to look for answers.

Ted K
USA
by Tony Stone
with Sharlto Copley
*World premiere

Ted K takes a radical approach to addressing Unabomber Ted Kaczynski’s way of thinking. Using intense images and texts from Kaczynski’s pamphlets, the result is no conventional biopic but a meditative composition – and an emotional exploration of violence.

Théo et les métamorphoses (Theo and the Metamorphosis)
France
by Damien Odoul
with Théo Kermel, Pierre Meunier, Élia Sulem, Louise Morin, Ayumi Roux
*World premiere

Théo, a 27-year-old with Down’s syndrome, lives in seclusion in the forest with his father. Every day he trains his body to become a samurai. One day his father goes away and Théo is alone with his world of thoughts. He decides to start a new life.

A Última Floresta (The Last Forest)
Brazil
by Luiz Bolognesi
*World premiere / Panorama Dokumente

In powerful images, alternating between documentary observation and staged sequences, and dense soundscapes, Luiz Bolognesi documents the Indigenous community of the Yanomami and depicts their threatened natural environment in the Amazon rainforest.

Die Welt wird eine andere sein (Copilot)
Germany / France
by Anne Zohra Berrached
with Canan Kir, Roger Azar, Jana Julia Roth, Ceci Chuh, Nicolas Chaoui, Özay Fecht
*World premiere

Asli marries Saeed in secret, even though her mother has something against Arabs and Saeed’s moods change like the weather. Then he disappears. The film tells the story of how Saeed changes Asli’s life – before the entire world is shaken.

Yuko No Tenbin (A Balance)
Japan
by Yujiro Harumoto
with Kumi Takiuchi, Ken Mitsuishi, Masahiro Umeda, Yuumi Kawai

In her new documentary, Yuko wants to tell the true story behind the scandal of a relationship between a female student and her teacher. When she learns about her own father’s affair with one of his students, she has to rethink her principles.

Perspektive Deutsches Kino

Instructions for Survival
Germany
by Yana Ugrekhelidze
*World premiere / documentary form / debut film

Jesus Egon Christus (Jesus Egon Christ)
Germany
by David Vajda, Saša Vajda
with Paul Arámbula, Sascha Alexander Geršak, Roxanna Stewens, Benjamin Stein, Zora Schemm, Angelo Martone
*World premiere

In Bewegung bleiben (Keep Moving)
Germany
by Salar Ghazi
*World premiere / documentary form / debut film

Die Saat (The Seed)
Germany
by Mia Maariel Meyer
with Hanno Koffler, Dora Zygouri, Robert Stadlober, Anna Blomeier, Andreas Döhler, Lilith Julie Johna
*World premiere

When a farm goes aflame
Germany
by Jide Tom Akinleminu
*World premiere / documentary form

Wood and Water
Germany / France
by Jonas Bak
with Anke Bak, Ricky Yeung, Alexandra Batten, Patrick Lo, Theresa Bak
*World premiere / debut film

Best of Deadline

Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.