2.12 (Sun) 13:00-15:05 On My Way

2.12 (Sun) 15:30-17:20 Fire at Sea

2.12 (Sun) 18:00-19:40 Apart Together

2.18 (Sat) 13:00-14:40 Things To Come

2.18 (Sat) 15:30-17:05 Finsterworld

2.18 (Sat) 18:00-20:20 Victoria

2.19 (Sun) 13:00-14:50 Today

2.19 (Sun) 15:30-17:10 In The Courtyard

2.19 (Sun) 18:00-20:00 My Land

2.25 (Sat) 13:00-14:55 Coming Out

2.25 (Sat) 15:30-17:00 I Feel Like Disco

2.25 (Sat) 18:00-20:00 Crosscurrent

On My Way

Director: Emmanuelle Bercot

Genre: Dramatic comedy

Country: France

Runtime: 123 min.

Bettie is in her early sixties. Having run out of cigarettes, she climbs into her car and drives off, leaving her mother, customers and the employees of her Breton restaurant to fend for themselves. But her search drags on. The shops are all shut and Bettie has no desire to return to her old life. She has just learned that her long-standing lover has gone off with a younger woman. And living with her difficult mother is no picnic. Bettie decides to take a break and drives on. She shares a cigarette with an old man and listens to his tragic love story. After a rollicking party she wakes up next morning in a hotel bed, with someone beside her. She gets to know her grandson and winds up with him at a picturesque hotel by the sea, in the midst of a reunion of French beauty queens from the year 1969.

Fire at Sea

Director: Gianfranco Rosi

Genre: Documentary

Country: Italy, France

Runtime: 109 min.

Samuele is twelve and lives on an island in the Mediterranean, far away from the mainland. Like all boys of his age he does not always enjoy going to school. He would much rather climb the rocks by the shore, play with his slingshot or mooch about the port. But his home is not like other islands. For years, it has been the destination of men, women and children trying to make the crossing from Africa in boats that are far too small and decrepit. The island is Lampedusa which has become a metaphor for the flight of refugees to Europe, the hopes, hardship and fate of hundreds of thousands of emigrants. These people long for peace, freedom and happiness and yet so often only their dead bodies are pulled out of the water. Thus, every day the inhabitants of Lampedusa are bearing witness to the greatest humanitarian tragedy of our times.

Apart Together

Director: Wang Quan’an

Genre: Drama

Country: China

Runtime: 96 min.

China, 1949. A soldier in the Kuomintang army, Liu Yangsheng fled Shanghai as the communist troops approached. He found refuge in Taiwan, leaving his pregnant wife Qiao Yu’e behind. Over fifty years after the proclamation of the People’s Republic of China on the Chinese mainland and the founding of the island republic of Taiwan, permission is given for the first time for a group of ex-soldiers of the National People’s Party to travel from Taiwan to China and be reunited with family members in Shanghai. And Liu is one of them…

Things To Come

Director: Mia Hansen-Love

Genre: Drama

Country: France, Germany

Runtime: 98 min.

Nathalie teaches philosophy at a high school in Paris. She is passionate about her job and particularly enjoys passing on the pleasure of thinking. Married with two children, she divides her time between her family, former students and her very possessive mother. One day, Nathalie’s husband announces he is leaving her for another woman. With freedom thrust upon her, Nathalie must reinvent her life. Mia Hansen-Løve’s fifth feature marks a departure from the topic of youth; instead she has chosen to explore the onset of age in a powerful yet also ironic portrait of a woman. The film revolves around questions of happiness, of having a vocation and the value or folly of established ways of living. It depicts not only one individual’s search for new avenues, it also asks if – and to what extent – philosophy can be applied to our everyday life.

Finsterworld

Director: Frauke Finsterwalder

Genre: Drama

Country: Germany

Runtime: 95 min.

A journey through a surreal Germany: A police officer in a bear costume. A female documentary filmmaker who is unable to find an interesting story. A pedicurist who carefully sets aside the hard skin removed from the feet of his aged female patient. A rich couple that refuses to sit in a German-built car. A history student uninterested in a class visit to a concentration camp. A wild man training a raven in the woods. In this anthology film, all are bound by family ties or a moment of coincidence in a country where the sun always shines and everybody is beautiful, successful and happy. This is until they reveal their darker side, and we discover that the step from idyll to inferno is a short one.

Victoria

Director: Sebastian Schipper

Genre: Thriller, Drama

Country: Germany

Runtime: 134 min.

Victoria, a young Spanish woman, dances through the Berlin scene with abandon. She meets four mates outside a club who introduce themselves as Sonne, Boxer, Blinker and Fuß. They quickly get chatting. Sonne and Victoria take a fancy to each other and slip away from the group at the first opportunity. But their tender flirting is rudely interrupted by the others because, for these pals, the night is far from over. To settle an old debt they have to pull off a dodgy deal. And because one of them is too drunk, they decide that Victoria, of all people, should take over the role of driver. What began as a game suddenly becomes deadly serious.

Today

Director: Alain Gomis

Genre: Dramatic comedy

Country: France, Senegal

Runtime: 88 min

Satche wakes up one morning at his mother’s house on the outskirts of Dakar and finds out he is about to die. Wandering through his hometown visiting friends, family, and his former lover, he decides to confront his mortality by making it the day of his life.

In The Courtyard

Director: Pierre Salvadori

Genre: Drama

Country: France

Runtime: 97 min.

The courtyard of a Parisian tenement building and its endearing, quirky inhabitants with their fears and desires are at the center of this zany tragicomedy. We meet the tenants through the eyes of Antoine, the new concierge. When Mathilde, a newly retired woman who lives on the top floor, notices a crack in her apartment wall one day, she’s convinced the building is going to collapse. Under Pierre Salvadori’s empathetic direction this crack becomes a metaphor for the fault line which runs through life. Finally, repressed emotions are allowed to surface...

My Land

Director: Jian Fan

Genre: Documentary

Country: China, South Korea

Runtime: 83 min.

Vegetable farmer Chen Jun runs a telephone hotline for Beijing’s migrant workers. He helps them fight for their rights. The municipality whose land he has farmed for many years now wants to earn money by building tower blocks for China’s burgeoning new middle class. But Chen Jun and his wife refuse to be fobbed off without compensation; instead they take up the fight against all kinds of intimidation, even if that means years of living in the midst of a building site without electricity or water. They are idealists, full of civic spirit and a deep sense of solidarity with fellow migrant workers in a country in which the laws do not appear to apply to everyone in the same way.

Coming Out

Director: Heiner Carow

Genre: Drama

Country: German Democratic Republic

Runtime: 113 min.

A young man, Matthias, has taken an overdose of sleeping pills and is wrestling with death. A flashback: an ambitious young teacher named Philipp Klahrmann is well-liked by his pupils and a fellow teacher, Tanja. When she falls in love with him they become a couple. But then Philipp runs into Jacob, an old school friend, who reminds him of their former homosexual relationship. Philipp has been repressing his predisposition for years but can do so no longer. He meets Matthias and falls in love with him. His passionate relationship with this young man puts him in a dilemma. He is fond of Tanja, who is now expecting his child, and does not want to disappoint her. Philip embarks on a painful process of finding himself. Not knowing what to do with himself or how to cope with his problems, he instead alienates everyone else. Upset and affronted, Tanja distances herself from him, and Matthias, who is deeply in love with Philipp, tries to commit suicide. In the end, Philipp manages to overcome his fear of public opinion and comes out of the closet.

I Feel Like Disco

Director: Axel Ranisch

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Country: Germany

Runtime: 98 min.

Actually, Florian Herbst is happiest when his dad isn’t at home. Then he can dance around the house with his mum, wear crazy costumes and forget all his troubles. And Hanno Herbst doesn’t really know what to do with his son, who has two left hands, a much too big belly and is neither interested in sports nor girls. But it’s not that bad! There is still mum. With a tender dominance she keeps the family’s fragile harmony in check and protects her two men from each other. At least until one terrible morning, when the house of cards collapses and mum vanishes from their lives from one moment to the next. Father and son are left behind, overwhelmed, but gradually learn to cope and find common ground.

Crosscurrent

Director: Yang Chao

Genre: Drama

Country: China

Runtime: 116 min.

Gao Chun, a young captain, steers his cargo boat up the Yangtze river. His father has recently died and, according to his beliefs, his son is now responsible for liberating his soul. At the same time, Gao Chun is looking for the love of his life. But all the women he meets in all the different ports are the same person: a magical being who grows ever younger the closer he gets to the source of the Yangtze. His trip up river turns into a journey through space and time…

The Berlin International Film Festival, better known as the Berlinale, is one of the world’s most prestigious film festivals on a par with the Cannes Film Festival, the Venice Film Festival, and the International Film Festival Rotterdam in Europe as well as the Sundance Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival in North America. Founded in 1951, the Berlinale has since discovered the artistic talent of a rich array of young filmmakers and introduced them to an international audience.

French Institute

The Goethe-Institut China

BARCO