Berlinale #1: "Good Luck Have Fun Don't Die" and more...

by Elisa Giudici

NO GOOD MEN © Adomeit Film

I'm on the ground here at Berlinale with a report on the first four films screened including a film from  Afghanistan, Slovakia standing in for Wisconsin, a drama about the Turkish diaspora in Germany, and Gore Verbinski's new sci-fi comedy Good Luck Have Fun Don't Die. 

No Good Men
The Berlinale has not opened with something this emotionally persuasive in years. With No Good Men, Afghan filmmaker Shahrbanoo Sadat delivers a film that appears modest in scale and technique yet proves unexpectedly buoyant. Its visual language is spare, at times almost elementary, but the lightness is deliberate. In a story about gender inequality in Kabul, hope becomes a quietly subversive choice...

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In conversation with "Sound of Falling"'s Evelyn Rack

Voting for the Oscar shortlists is ongoing, including in the Best International Film category. Here's Eurocheese talking with Evelyn Rack, the extraordinary editor of Germany's Sound of Falling...

SOUND OF FALLING (2025) Mascha Schilinski | © MUBI

(Please note - this interview contains SPOILERS in you haven't seen the film.)

EUROCHEESE: Congratulations on Sound of Falling. I was able to catch it at AFI fest this year – it was my favorite film at the festival. It such a unique viewing experience – so different from anything that I've seen in a long time, and I'm really excited to get to talk to you about it today. First of all, I just wanted to find out a little bit about how the project came to you. 

EVELYN RACK: The producer Maren Schmitt approached me – we had worked on other projects before and she told me listen Eva, I have this amazing script from this awesome director; you have to come on board, I know you're the right one. So she sent me the script, I opened it, and on the first page before anything else there was a quote from Bresson: “I'd rather have people feel a film before understanding it.” My heart skipped a beat because I feel like it's exactly my editing approach on every film that I edit, that I seek to really feel a film rather than understanding it...

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Germany's "Lola" Awards, or "Babylon Berlin" lives on...

by Nathaniel R

Christian Friedel's "musical" debut in THE WHITE LOTUS may have been a non-starter scene but the actor (of ZONE OF INTEREST and BABYLON BERLIN fame) hosted the 75th Lola Awards with song and dance.

While this news is a month or so old, there are so few movie awards in the summer we feel we owe it to Germany to report on the Lola Awards since we reported on Norway's Amanda Awards last week. The Lola (aka the German Film Award) has been awarded since 1951. The biggest trophy hauls ever have gone to The Devil Strikes At Night (1958) -- which Juan Carlos and I discussed on his podcast The One Inch Barrier a few years ago -- and Michael Haneke's black and white period drama The White Ribbon (2010) which both earned 10 trophies (both also competed for at the Oscars for Best Foreign Language Feature). The runner up to these biggest winners ever was the excellent dramedy Good Bye Lenin! (2003) which made an international star out of Daniel Brühl back in the day and collected 8 Lolas though it was sadly snubbed at the Oscars for Best Foreign Film. 

This year functioned as an unofficial reunion for the cast of the great TV series Babylon Berlin and two minor Oscar players from last season won key awards...

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Cannes Diary 03: Our first Palme d'Or contender "Sound of Falling"

by Elisa Guidici

Mascha Schilinski's Sound of Falling is only the first film in competition but it's already a strong contender for the Palme d'Or, at least according to initial press reactions. These reactions, however, were divided on which directorial comparison best captured the German film's unsettling power and evocative atmosphere. Some critics have invoked Haneke – indeed, it’s hard not to recall The White Ribbon when faced with a narrative that unearths the unknowable, often dark, elements lurking even within children. Others point to Bergman, an almost inevitable comparison given the screenplay's skill in excavating the lives of four generations of women in a German farmhouse. It delves beneath their facade to touch upon a harsh, undiluted humanity where good and evil, innocence and cruelty, inextricably merge and overlap.

My own mind, however, drifted to Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides, though Angelika, Erika, Alma, and Lenka represent a far rougher and utterly unsentimental iteration of young womanhood...

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TIFF '23: “The Teachers’ Lounge” builds a fizzling provocation

by Cláudio Alves

Germany’s official submission for the 96th Academy Awards starts with a students’ rights violation. Between teachers and administration, headaches abound due to a series of thefts with no apparent culprit. By the time we meet them, with no solution in sight, the staff sanctions two teachers to go into a classroom and question the students. When no kid comes forward with a confession, not even after the class representatives are pressured, the educators insist on searching through their belongings. A suspicious amount of money is found in a wallet, paranoia combined with xenophobic distrust toward the child’s Turkish origins. Turns out the money was a present from his parents.

It’s an embarrassment for all, especially Carla Nowak, the teacher whose classroom got raided. New to the school and full of righteous indignation, she sets out to make a point, kickstarting a chain of events that will soon slip out of everyone’s control…

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