The next big film festival after Sundance every years is the Berlin Film Festival, also known as Berlinale for short. Celebrating its 68th year, the Berlin Film Festival kicked off today (Thursday, February 15th) in Potsdamer Platz in the middle of the city. This is my fifth year in a row covering Berlinale, it's always a good time, the festival runs smoothly and all of the venues are top notch. Most of their screenings are on time, they're always totally packed, but the crowds are focused on the film and ready to enjoy some cinema. This is a festival for the city, for locals to attend, but there's also a huge contingent of press who fly in from all over the world see a few world premieres. I'm just happy to keep watching more films at another great fest.
After returning from Sundance, I'm usually very excited for Berlinale. However, the line-up for 2018 is not that impressive. There's not much I'm excited to see, honestly, which is not usually the case. And there's not much in the competition that seems too promising. All of my most anticipated films are showing on opening day: Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs (which I can't wait to see), Lars Kraume's The Silent Revolution, and Isabel Coixet's The Bookshop. There's also a few Sundance films that I'm catching up with here: Josephine Decker's Madeline's Madeline and Lauren Greenfield's documentary Generation Wealth, plus Idris Elba's Yardie. And in competition, there are a few I'm curious about: Christian Petzold's Transit, Steven Soderbergh's Unsane, and some German film called My Brother's Name Is Robert and He Is an Idiot (which I want to see for the title alone). Find the full selection of films on their website Berlinale.de.
As usual, you can follow my updates from Berlinale on Twitter @firstshowing throughout the festival. I'll be posting reviews and other blog recaps on the site as the festival continues on. Based on the mediocre line-up this year, I have a feeling Berlinale might be a bit more low key. I'm just going to keep seeing films and if there's any real gems or anything that really stands out, I'll try and bring attention to it and write about it. The rest of them, well, maybe you'll catch a few at another film festival near you. Not everything can be a masterpiece, and sometimes you might end up seeing a batch of bad films. But as always, I love film festivals and I love being back in the mix of people and cinema and all the excitement about what's on the big screen.
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