From controversial film “Dau” Ilya Khrzhanovsky to mystical Thriller with Elisabeth moss: Vogue.ua chose the five most interesting films of the Berlin film festival that are worth a look in theaters after the festival.
“Minamata” – a biopic of the brilliant American photographer William Eugene Smith, which entered the history through its stories from the Second world war. The photographer is played by johnny Depp, who achieved extraordinary similarities with his character. The film is about one of the biggest stories of Eugene Smith: he has exposed environmental crime in the Japanese city of Minamata, whose residents suffered mercury emissions in water because of the actions of some chemical Corporation. 14 people were killed, many were injured, and thanks to including the work of reporter Eugene Smith, the case went to trial.
It took ten years in Director Ilya Khrzhanovsky to shoot the film “Dau” is the most mysterious project in modern cinema. “Dau” is a biographical drama about the life of Soviet physicist Lev Landau, based on the memoirs of his wife Concordia’s Terentievna Drobantseva. The film was conceived in the early 2000s, and in 2006 he entered the list of the most anticipated projects to release at the Cannes film festival. Most of the filming took place in Kharkov in the period from 2008 to 2009 – here at the Ukrainian physico-technical Institute worked with the famous physicist in the 30-ies of the last century. To shoot film about Lev Landau in Kharkov, abandoned stadium built a huge Soviet research institutes, recreating the style, fashion and atmosphere of the Soviet era. About filming legends: obsessed movie Hrzhanovsky, in fact, has closed the crew on location. Ilya Hrzhanovsky has received 700 hours of footage and divided into series. In Berlin show “Dau. Natasha” – a story about a lunch lady Natasha, the life which attracted the attention of the Soviet secret police.
To film the classic tale by Carlo Collodi took Italian visionary, Director and winner of the Cannes film festival, Matteo Garrone (“Reality”, Dogmen”). The main role of Geppetto, or Pope Carlo – plays star Italian actor Roberto Bernini. Garrone took a spectacular and magical story about the animated wooden doll Pinocchio and his adventures, designed for family viewing, and critics have called the work of the Italian one of the closest to the original interpretations of “Pinocchio” in the world. In Ukraine the film can be seen from March 12.
In the movie “Shirley” Elisabeth moss plays a classic of American literature and cult horror author Shirley Jackson (by the way, is Shirley Jackson influenced the development of Stephen king). Tape art based on the novel “Shirley” Susan Scarfe Merrell. The plot revolves around a couple who moved into a house with the writer and her husband, Stanley Edgar Hyman (Michael Stuhlbarg). Soon the four heroes, a sudden connection and relationships are the inspiration for the next book of the writer. The picture is mystical and atmospheric.
In 1929 the German writer-expressionist Alfred Döblin wrote the novel “Berlin Alexanderplatz” – the story of Berlin the 1920s had entered the lists of the best German novels of the 20th century. The book is not just filmed. In 2020 comes the modern version of this story is not a literal adaptation, but rather a movie based on the book. The main character Francis runs from West Africa to Berlin. But in modern Berlin with people without citizenship and work permits are treated just as ruthlessly, as with the work of Franz Biberkopf, the protagonist of the classic novel that Speaks to Alfred, who lived exactly one hundred years ago. As a literary source, this modern version of Berlin Alexanderplatz also talks about society and how it accepts or does not accept – outsiders.
