Kelly Reichardt and Sally Potter are heading to… | Little White Lies

Festivals

Kel­ly Reichardt and Sal­ly Pot­ter are head­ing to the 2020 Berlinale

29 Jan 2020

Words by Sophie Monks Kaufman

Autumn trees, people on a wooden dock, cow walking across the dock in a lakeside setting.
Autumn trees, people on a wooden dock, cow walking across the dock in a lakeside setting.
They’ll be joined by Abel Fer­rara and Tsai Ming-liang when the fes­ti­val kicks off in February.

The Berlin Film Fes­ti­val com­pe­ti­tion line-up has been announced and we are punch­ing the air because there’s a new Kel­ly Reichardt movie in town. First Cow is based on a book by her trust­ed writer-col­lab­o­ra­tor, Jonathan Red­mond, and fol­lows the fate of lon­er cook who falls in with a group of fur trap­pers in 19th cen­tu­ry Oregon.

Our oth­er antic­i­pat­ed picks in what experts are call­ing a ​“stacked” pro­gramme include Undine by Chris­t­ian Pet­zold, who is still cast­ing a saint­ly glow after Tran­sit, and whose star Paula Beer returns to play a muse­um guide in Berlin who vows to kill her boyfriend once he leaves her.

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Then there is the pres­ence of Tai­we­nese mae­stro Tsai Ming-liang, renowned for imbu­ing the minu­ti­ae of life with great majesty. His new film, Days, is about two peo­ple who have a brief encounter before their life con­tin­ues as before.

Siberia sees direc­tor Abel Fer­rera reteam­ing with his favourite lead­ing man, Willem Dafoe, for a tale of a bro­ken man who goes to live in a cave where he has demon­ic dreams.

There’s also new work from Philippe Gar­rel in the form of The Salt of Tears about a young man’s com­ing of age. Titan of the British art­house Sal­ly Pot­ter is back with the Robert Frost poem-ref­er­enc­ing The Roads Not Tak­en, which cap­tures a day in the life of a men­tal­ly trou­bled NYC res­i­dent and his con­cerned daugh­ter, played by Javier Bar­dem and Elle Fanning.

Two people, a man and a woman, with serious expressions, close together in a dark scene.

It is not a world pre­mière, hav­ing just played at Sun­dance, how­ev­er we would be remiss not to men­tion Eliza Hittman’s Nev­er Real­ly Some­times Always. Her debut Beach Rats was a mes­meris­ing shiv­er of a call­ing card. We can’t wait to catch her por­trait of a teenage girl in rur­al Penn­syl­va­nia try­ing to secure an abortion.

Check out the full com­pe­ti­tion line-up:

Berlin Alexan­der­platz (Burhan Qur­bani)
DAU. Natasha (Ilya Khrzhanovskiy and Jeka­te­ri­na Oer­tel)
The Woman Who Ran (Hong Sang-soo)
Delete His­to­ry (Benoît Delépine, Gus­tave Kervern)
The Intrud­er (Natalia Meta)
Bad Tales (Dami­ano D’Innocenzo and Fabio D’Innocenzo)
First Cow (Kel­ly Reichardt)
Irra­di­at­ed (Rithy Panh)
The Salt of Tears (Philippe Gar­rel)
Nev­er Rarely Some­times Always (Eliza Hittman)
Days (Tsai Ming-Liang)
The Roads Not Tak­en (Sal­ly Pot­ter)
My Lit­tle Sis­ter (Stéphanie Chu­at and Véronique Rey­mond)
There Is No Evil (Moham­mad Rasoulof)
Siberia (Abel Fer­rara)
All the Dead Ones (Cae­tano Gotar­do and Mar­co Dutra)
Undine (Chris­t­ian Pet­zold)
Hid­den Away (Gior­gio Diritti)

For more info head to berli​nale​.de

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