Oscar nominee Cillian Murphy will open the Berlin International Film Festival on Thursday with the world premiere of a drama about Ireland's notorious laundries, which serve as prison camps for “fallen” young women.
“Small Things Like These,” based on the best-selling novel by Claire Keegan and starring Michelle Fairley (“Game of Thrones”) and Emily Watson (“Chernobyl”), is one of 20 films competing for the Golden Bear top prize of the festival.
The Kenyan-Mexican actress Lupita Nyong'o is the first black jury president of the Berlinale, which is taking place for the 74th time.
Given the plight of Iranian women, the Gaza war and the resurgent far right, the event is expected to spark debate and possibly protests, Nyong'o said she was looking forward to a challenging festival.
“I think we're here to see how artists respond to the world we're living in right now,” she told reporters. “I’m excited to see what they do with it.”
The eleven-day cinema showcase has the strongest political focus of Europe's three major festivals and serves as an important launching pad for films from around the world.
– “Stand against injustice” –
's Scott Roxborough said the Berlinale's outgoing directing duo Mariette Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian have had a “difficult time” as the coronavirus pandemic has cast a long shadow over the past three years.
He told AFP he predicted more “excitement” this year both on the red carpet and at the festival's sprawling European Film Market, where film rights are bought and sold for worldwide distribution.
“The old spirit should be back at this Berlinale,” he said.
In “Small Things Like These,” Murphy, who is nominated for an Oscar next month for his role in the biopic “Oppenheimer,” reunites with Belgian filmmaker Tim Mielants, who directed him in the hit series “Peaky Blinders.”
Murphy plays a devoted father who uncovers shocking secrets about his town's monastery, which is tied to one of modern Ireland's biggest scandals: the Magdalene Laundries, penal institutions run by the Roman Catholic Church from the 1820s to the 1920s were operated in the 1990s.
Most of the residents of the laundries were ostracized “fallen women” who had become pregnant outside of marriage. Others included rape victims, orphans, prostitutes and the disabled.
“We are confident that this story, which combines kindness toward the most vulnerable and the willpower to stand up against injustice, will resonate with everyone,” Chatrian said.
– Lifetime Award for Scorsese –
Adam Sandler will introduce his latest Netflix release, Spaceman, about a lonely astronaut who seeks the help of an alien when he becomes estranged from his wife, played by Carey Mulligan.
Mexican Gael Garcia Bernal appears in “Another End,” which is about a technology that allows those left behind to reconnect with the dead. Cannes Best Actress winners Renate Reinsve (“The Worst Person in the World”) and Berenice Bejo (“The Artist”) play the leading roles.
The immigration drama “La Cocina,” starring Rooney Mara, promises a “tragic and comic tribute to the invisible people who prepare our food in the world’s restaurants.”
And in one of the most attention-grabbing titles in the series, “Pepe” imagines the inner workings of a hippopotamus from Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar’s private menagerie.
Martin Scorsese, who was nominated for the Oscar for best director for the tenth time for “Killers of the Flower Moon,” will receive an honorary Golden Bear for his life’s work in Berlin.
Iranians Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha said they were banned from traveling to Berlin for the premiere of their feminist competition entry “My Favorite Cake.”
As far-right parties rise around the globe, the festival will spotlight cinema that deals with Germany's Nazi past.
In “Treasure,” Stephen Fry and Lena Dunham star in a drama about a Holocaust survivor and his daughter who return together to his Polish hometown and Auschwitz.
And the German drama “From Hilde, With Love,” starring Liv Lisa Fries (“Babylon Berlin”), tells the true story of a couple at the heart of the resistance group “Rote Kapelle” in 1942.
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