by Helen Barlow
Former London Film Festival director Tricia Tuttle took over the reins of The Berlin Film Festival in April, and much has been expected of her ability to inject a new sense of life into the event for its 75th anniversary in February.
Early announcements for The 2025 Berlin Film Festival have included word that US director Todd Haynes (Far from Heaven, I’m Not There, Carol, May December) will head the competition jury and that German director Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) will open the festival on February 13 with his new feature, The Light. The German-French family drama reunites the director with Lars Eidinger, who starred in Tykwer’s hit series, Babylon Berlin, and made a huge impression at this year’s Berlinale in Matthias Glasner’s Dying, a very different family story of a dysfunctional family told with surprising humour. The Light, which screens out of competition, follows the everyday life of a German middle class family in a world that is spinning fast and has become unstable. “We knew as soon as we saw The Light that we wanted to have it open the 75th Berlinale,” Tuttle said in a statement. “Tom Tykwer finds beauty and joy in our often fractured and challenging world and magically captures the essence of our modern life on screen.”
While the bulk of the big titles, including the competition, will be known until the end of January, on Tuesday, a raft of films was announced. So far, two Australian films have made the cut. The animated feature Lesbian Space Princess (pictured above), the debut by Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese, will world premiere in the Panorama section after a work-in-progress version screened at The Adelaide Film Festival. Voiced by Shabana Azeez, Gemma Chua Tran, Richard Roxburgh, Bernie Van Tiel and Mark Bonanno, the film tells of introverted space princess Saira, who is forced to leave her home planet of Clitopolis on an inter-gay-lactic mission to save her ex-girlfriend, who has been kidnapped and is being held ransom by the Straight White Maliens. Sounds like a hoot!
Meanwhile, the Australian documentary short, White Ochre (Ornmol), will screen in the Generation Kplus section. It’s directed by Marlikka Perdrisat, an environmentalist, legal academic and Nyikina Warrwa and Wangkumara Barkindji woman. The blurb reads as follows: Kupungarri in northwestern Australia is one of the most natural places left in the world. The small community strengthens its young people through a close connection with Country. Excitement grows as they prepare for the biggest event of the year, the Mowanjum Festival.
Michel Gondry will also present his French animated film, Maya, Give Me a Title, in the Generation sidebar. Narrated by Pierre Niney, the funny and poignant film is an ode to Gondry’s daughter.
After presenting his previous film Passages in the Berlinale Panorama, New York director Ira Sachs returns with Peter Hujar’s Day, likewise starring Ben Whishaw. The film focuses on a 1974 conversation between the gay New York photographer Hujar and his friend, Linda Rosenkrantz, played by Rebecca Hall.
In the Canadian documentary, Paul, Denis Côté follows a man struggling with depression and social anxiety who has found refuge in serving women who invite him to clean their homes. By sharing his gently eccentric routines on social media, he combats loneliness and takes life one day at a time.
In the Berlinale Special, Ido Fluk’s Köln 75 starring Mala Emde sounds interesting, even if the festival’s blurb stakes a mighty claim. The film tells “the true story of Vera Brandes, the teenage patron saint of the 1970s Cologne music scene, who risked everything to organise the greatest solo concert in music history: Keith Jarrett’s legendary Köln Concert.”
Also from Germany, Jan-Ole Gerster debuts the neo-noir thriller, Islands, starring Sam Riley and Stacy Martin. The story follows Riley’s Tom, a tennis coach at a luxury hotel, who has his life changed when a new family arrives. Matters take a dark turn when the husband disappears and both Tom and the wife become suspects.
The Canadian film Honey Bunch from directing duo Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli stars Ben Petrie, Kate Dickie, Jason Isaacs and India Brown. When Diana’s husband takes her to an experimental trauma clinic deep in the wilderness, she cannot remember why. As her memories begin to creep back, so too do some unexpected and sinister truths about her marriage.
This year, the Retrospective section will be devoted to German genre films of the 1970s, where the festival promises things will be getting “wild, weird and bloody.” From offbeat to wacky, with action thrills and graphic visuals, fifteen films from East and West Germany, including 1977’s Lady Dracula, aim to demonstrate that German genre films can do it on their own terms.
The Berlin Film Festival runs from 13-23 February 2025. For more information, click here.
