Berlinale: With "Wolfram" Warwick Thornton finally strikes gold

by Elisa Giudici

For a filmmaker long associated with the Australian western, Warwick Thornton has often seemed trapped inside his own obsessions. Film after film has returned to the same harsh landscapes, the same colonial fault lines, the same story of Aboriginal endurance under white domination — sometimes with conviction, often with diminishing returns. With Wolfram, however, something finally coheres. After several disappointments, Thornton delivers his strongest work in years, perhaps decades: a film that feels less like repetition and more like arrival.

The title refers to tungsten, mined with pickaxes, dynamite, and small hands nimble enough to pry metal from rock. Those hands belong to Max and Kid, two Aboriginal kids forced to labor underground for Billy, a white man who oscillates between surrogate father and exploiter...

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Berlinale's would-be scandal "Rosebush Pruning"

by Elisa Giuidici

Incest, murder, and the airless cynicism of extreme wealth: Rosebush Pruning positions itself aggressively as this year’s Berlinale provocation. Very loosely inspired by Marco Bellocchio’s 1965 debut Fists in the Pocket, Karim Aïnouz’s English-language drama borrows the earlier film’s diseased family structure but transplants it into the sterile rarefaction of contemporary ultra-wealthy excess.

Bellocchio’s earlier Italian classic centered on a wealthy young epileptic plotting to eliminate his blind mother and siblings to “free” his older brother from domestic obligation. Aïnouz retains the architecture of that premise while shifting the social register upward. Here the patriarch is a blind, theatrically transgressive father (Tracy Letts), alternately possessive and imperious, presiding over four adult children (Riley Keough, Jamie Bell, Callum Turner, and Lukas Gage) already enriched by their late mother’s estate. Pamela Anderson’s absent matriarch - killed by wolves - haunts the film from its opening frames...

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Sundance 2026: Rinko Kikuchi plays a dancing widow in “Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!”

by Cláudio Alves

Two weeks ago, the 2026 Sundance Film Festival came to a close, marking its first edition after founder Robert Redford’s death and the last time it was held in Park City. Next year, the festivities will take place in Boulder, Colorado, the start of a new chapter in its history. For me, it was also a first, as, after years of trying, I finally got press credentials to cover Sundance online – fifth time’s the charm. Sadly, the limited number of days of the online program meant I had little time to post anything during the fest itself. And then came the storms, a weather calamity that’s ravaged Portugal and has left me various days without power and only intermittent wi-fi. 

My apologies that it took so long for this coverage to kickstart, but better late than never. And to get things going in style, let’s look at one of the films Nathaniel has already spotlighted in the “We Can’t Wait” series, about his most-anticipated 2026 releases – Ha Chan, Shake Your Booty!…

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Berlinale's best suprise is both a debut and an Ethan Hawke showcase

by Elisa Giudici

Ethan Hawke in THE WEIGHT, which premiered at Sundance and now hits Berlin.

The most galvanizing film of this year’s Berlinale didn’t screen in competition, having opened at Sundance last month. It’s a debut  directed by an Irish editor few outside industry circles could have named a month ago. After The Weight, that anonymity will surely be temporary. Padraic McKinley (previously known for cutting mid-tier commercial fare) announces himself here with a thriller of such muscular clarity that it easily eclipses many of the films vying for the Golden Bear...

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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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