Star Power @Berlinale 2023

Berlinale 2023 would be a celebration of the “catalysing and revolutionary notion of cinema, which unites even when it divides,” stated artistic director Carlo Chatrian. This year’s edition includes everything from star power to extravagant red carpet evenings. The 2023 edition is the first real edition for Chatrian and managing director Maritte Rissenbeek. This year’s actor awards will favour a gender-neutral format. During a retrospective of his films, Academy Award winner Steven Spielberg will be honoured with a Golden Bear for his life’s work. Nineteen films will compete for the main awards. Asian animated films “Art College 1994” by China’s Liu Jian and “Suzume” by Japan’s Makoto Shinkai will compete for the Golden Bear.

Panorama

Ghaath (Marathi) - Ambush

Writer-Director: Chhatrapal Ninawe

Country: India

Starring: Jitendra Joshi, Milind Shinde, Janardan Kadam, Dhananjay Mandaokar, Suruchi Adarkar

Producers: Shiladitya Bora, Manish Mundra, Milapsinh Jadeja, Sanyukta Gupta

Co-Producer: Ashok Mahapatra

World Sales: Platoon One Films

Since India’s independence from British colonization,, the tribals of India have been fighting to protect the three central elements of their lives – Land, Water and Jungle. Ghaath is a story told through those elements and corresponding three characters – an undercover Maoist trying to track down a police officer, who is responsible for the death of his brother; a cop trying to secure the surrender of a Maoist guerrilla with the help of an aborigine; and a Maoist besotted by a tribal woman, while on the run from the Maoist cadre. The film is set on the fringes of a Maoist-affected area, shining a light on the tribals caught between conflicting ideologies.

Relying on his images to depict this beleaguered region in central India, Chhatrapal Ninawe transports the audience into an almost hypnotic atmosphere that heightens both the senses and awareness. An unsparing psychological portrait of a protracted and ruthless civil war that continues to rage.

Panorama

And Towards Happy Alleys (Farsi, English)

Director: Sreemoyee Singh

Country: India

Starring: Jafar Panahi, Nasrin Soutodeh, Jinous Nazokkar, Farhad

Kheradmand, Aida

Mohammadkhani

Producer: Sreemoyee Singh

Executive Producers: Hussain Currimbhoy, Noopur Sinha, Orly Ravid

Sales Contact: Happy Alleys Films

Inspired by the cinema and poetry of Iran a young Indian filmmaker undertakes a self-reflexive journey to explore the lives of filmmakers and women in Tehran. Through intimate and unexpected conversations, the camera captures revelations about how Iranians negotiate life under the Islamic Regime, its constant censorship, and the limitations on basic human expression. Moving and unguarded exchanges with acclaimed Iranian filmmakers Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Shirvani open a door into the lives of women whose daily battles with repression have been the source of their stories. We witness how the Regime dismisses the idea of femininity by erasing a woman’s body, forbidding women to sing, forbidding desire. Over six years, the filmmaker’s camera captures the simmering anxieties, fears, hopes and dreams of a nation on the brink of revolution. Woven within the film’s careful observation and diligent enquiry is the historic journey of Iranian women from mute observers to those fighting to reclaim their lost voices, as they spearhead the largest struggle for liberation rocking Iran now.

And, Towards Happy Alleys is a passionate declaration of love for the cinema and poetry of Iran which also provides a frank view of daily life, and bears witness to a fearless generation raising its voice and implacably demanding its civil liberties.

Generation 14plus

Aatmapamphlet (Marathi)

Director: Ashish Avinash Bende

Country: India

Producers: Bhushan Kumar, Krishan Kumar, Aanand L. Rai, Kanupriya A. Iyer, Madhugandha

Kulkarni, Shariq Patel

Starring: Om Bendkhale, Pranjali Shrikant, Chetan Wagh, Manas Tondwalkar, Khushi

Hajare

World Sales: Zee Studios

Daydreams, disillusions, and a sudden rush of joy. The symptoms of a first love are everywhere in this delightful directorial debut that reworks the visual codes of Bollywood romances to great comic effect. Yet as Ashish recalls his childhood, and time speeds up or slows down, the story of his love for his classmate Srushti gets caught up in that of 1990s India. Caste and religion threaten to turn friends into foes, but Ashish and his classmates ultimately prove their friendship runs deeper than societal divisions. This plea for (national) unity, voiced by a band of ordinary schoolboys, is in no way naïve: here is a strong rebuttal to the violently divisive walls and barricades of classism and religion tearing the whole world apart; here is popular comedy of the best kind.

Forum Expanded

No Stranger at All (Hindi, Urdu, English)

Director: Priya Sen

Country: India

Producer: Priya Sen

“For two years starting in 2020, this work has been forming along the edges of disquiet and premonition, in fragments and intensities, through wandering and notstaying. It has tried to find language for and ways across the bizarre upheavals of social and political values with the rise of fascism in India and a global pandemic. It has insisted on being amongst the things that keep from falling apart. Filmed in Delhi, these incomplete fictions are of the people, places, and protests that keep the language of hatred at bay and absorb the city’s grief and euphoria. In them are the continuous echoes of a violent and tenuous present. The false closures and tenuous associations in this video/essay compose a timeline of the city at an angle through the time of this work. There is a shadowy sense of a protagonist who undreams it all; a stranger, who it turns out, is no stranger at all.”

Priya Sen