Berlinale 2014: Love, rice anD nymphomaniacs

Published on January 29, 2014

Berlin

With more than 400 films, 10 sec­tions and nearly 500,000 tick­ets sold the Berli­nale Fes­ti­val in 2014 is as im­pres­sive as ever. "Sounds good. Is good." agrees Di­eter Kosslick, Fes­ti­val's Di­rec­tor. At the press con­fer­ence on Feb­ru­ary 28, he and his artis­tic col­lab­o­ra­tors pre­sented a taster of the pro­gramme to the media. This year it in­cludes George Clooney's art thieves, African hi­jack­ers and Lars von Trier's nympho­ma­ni­acs, but also Tai­wanese rice bomber, Geor­gian brides and Yves Saint-Lau­rent's frolic. From Viet­namese sci-fi to a gay move­ment film from Italy - the va­ri­ety is huge. So who­ever won­dered what is it that peo­ple do out of love, will surely find an an­swer dur­ing the Berli­nale.

23 films com­pete for the Bears this year. Their di­rec­tors and con­trib­u­tors will be buzzing with ex­pec­ta­tion for the award cer­e­mony on Feb­ru­ary 15. The British film­maker Ken Loach, how­ever, can al­ready calmly drop into his cin­ema seat. He will be awarded the Hon­orary Golden Bear for his life­time achieve­ments.

How does the film­mak­ing do in Latin Amer­ica? How do Berlin’s neigh­bour­hood cin­e­mas look like? How is it that we hardly know any film from Bhutan? How to be­come a Eu­ro­pean Shoot­ing Star? And what moves young Eu­ro­pean film­mak­ers? Berlin’s Cafeba­bel team will pur­sue these and other ques­tions from the start of the fes­ti­val on Feb­ru­ary 6. Our team, Daniel Tkatch, Christina Heuschen, Ste­fano Lip­iello, Lil­ian Pi­than and the new pho­tog­ra­pher Jean-Paul Pas­tor Guzmán, are al­ways on the look­out for in­spir­ing sub­jects, wacky pic­tures and the next cin­e­matic kick.

You will find up­dates here, on our Face­book page Berlin.​Babel.​Blog and this year also on Twit­ter.

Translated from Berlinale 2014: Liebe, Reis und Nymphomanen