The 10 Best Movies of the 2021 Berlin Film Festival

This year’s 71st Berlin International Film Festival was 100% digital. It was also only the second edition assembled by artistic director Carlo Chatrian and executive director Mariette Rissenbeek. No, the Berlinale isn’t Cannes or Venice, but it very much is its own thing and all the better for it. Berlin provided a mosaic of intriguing titles this year in what was a shortened 5-day event. Here are the 10 highlights.

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1.  What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?

 By far the most beautiful film of this year's Berlinale edition – and the best: Georgian director Alexandre Koberidze conducted a modern fairy tale full of magic and life that finds beauty in the simplest daily tasks and incidents. Starting as an inpossible love story the director lets his camera move around in a small Romanian town and looks into corners we miss or ignore in everyday life: A film full of hope that wants to tell us that life is good and full of miracles, even though all the horrible things that happen around us every day and even though we may doubt or already have forgotten it.

2.  Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn

A deserving Golden Bear winner: In his funny, over-the-top, pungent and intelligent satire Romanian director Radu Jude attacks the current zeitgeist of hypocrite hypermoralism and new and old forms of illiberal babbitry that poison society. If you like he first two parts of his creative triptych is a matter of personal taste, but the third and longest part, the finale, is a (master)piece of art itself and ends with 3 open endings: the last provocation and wink of a director who enjoys to spit in everyone's face, including the audience's.

3.   Ted K

A gripping, artfully crafted and stylish portait of “Unabomber“ Ted Kaczynski who spread fear and horror in the 80s and 90s troughout the USA with his mailbomb attacks: Director Tony Stone shows us a man who has had it with society, turns away from it and gets lost deeper and deeper in his own, strange worldviews which get more dangerous every day - until he sees no other option than violence to make his voice heard. „Ted K“ is full of amazing pictures and scenes which are combined with a brilliant soundtrack by band Blanck Mass: Exactly that sort of small, dirty, mid-budget B-movie that the US-cinema has lacked so much over the last years.

4. I Am Your Man

Is there a possibility of love between man and machine? Like many films before, german director Maria Schrader explores the possibilities of a futuristic society where androids and humans can co-exist. Unlike many other films she does this with an almost realistic approach and in a humorous way, her film is more romantic comedy than drama or science fiction. While female lead Maren Eggert got the Silver Bear for best actress, it is her collegue Dan Stevens as an almost-human robot with a funny British accent who carries I am your man“ and is the real attraction of this highly entertaining film.

5.  Death of a Virgin and The Sin of Not Living

4 boys in a small town in Lebanon: To celebrate and initiate their manhood, they make an appointment with a prostiture, for some of them it is „the first time“. On their way there, full of excitement, they talk about life and future plans, brag, joke around and enjoy the last days of their rather careless youth and the begin of a new step in life. In his impressive feature debut director George Peter Barbari ask us, and his protagonists, what it means to be a „man“ in the Middle East - and everywhere, while portraying a sort of Arabic „lost generation“ with little perspective for the future. The tone of his film is deeply melancholic while he captures moments of truthfulness and intimacy in the interactions between the four friends, the extensive monologues that accompany the plot – and finally between protagonist Etienne and the prostitute, who share a intensely sad, but unique moment which neither of them will ever forget.

6.  The White Fortress

The Bosnian capitol Sarajevo: Faruk by accidents meets Mona, two adolescents with completely different social backgrounds. Faruk lives with his ill grandmother, after his mother has died too young, and tries to escape poverty by running semi-legal jobs for others while Mona grew up in a villa in the suburbs with her parents who are involved in high politics. Nevertheless, she feels imprisoned by the „golden cage“ and would rather not go to Canada where her over-ambitous parents want to send her. With Faruk she finds freedom to ber herself, to be spontanoues, to live, Faruk enjoys to finally have found someone who respects and listens to him and what he has to say. They start a romance which is damned to fail due to exterior circumstances, and the same as director Igor Drljača tells this little lovestory like a fairy tale, it also ends like one: A small gem full of subtle magic.

7.  Language Lessons

Adam’s husband Mark gifts him with virual Spanish lessons with teacher Carino: At first, Adam has no mood at all, but after the first sessions with the highly charismatic girl he starts to like the conversations with her and is ready to include them in his strict daily rountines. Suddenly his beloved partner dies – and because there is no one else, Adam calls Carino and shares he feelings with her. They soon develop an intimate platonic friendship with all ups and downs and conflicts: “Language Lessons“ is an attempt to fathom the possibilities of friendship between man and woman, clever, moving, funny and well played.

8. Limbo

In “Limbo“ Hongkong genre-director Soi Cheang conducts a dark, haunting portrait of the criminal demimonde of his hometown: Two police officers hunt down a brutal serial killer who likes to cut off women’s arms. They have to descend into a world that has lost everything human and where bestiality and animalic instincts reign. Cheangs action-thriller is hard to watch, ultra-violent and the monochrome aesthetics is a symbol for a world that has lost any emotion or hope.

9. Albatros (Drift Away)

Police officer Laurent loves his girlfriend, whom he finally proposes to after 10 years, their young daughter und his hard and challenging, but fulfilling job in a small French town: He has gained a respectable social position he has worked for hard and that makes him a respected member of the community. But then a police operation goes wrong, he has to shoot at farmer Julien who threatens to kill himself - and who dies afterwards. Tormented by guilt, attacked by other villagers and traumatized Laurent has to take some time off and re-discover himself on a long sailing trip at sea: A sensitive and convincing drama about pain, loss and life.

10.  The World After Us

A young man (with migration background) moves to Paris with big plans: He wants to become a writer, not only for himself, but also for his loving parents who always support him in any way they can. In the meantime, he takes on small occasional jobs to pay for the tiny apartment he shares with a friend and for basic things like food. Then Labidi meets a girl, some years minor to him and still a student, also as poor as him, but with the same ambition: In his feature debut director Louda Ben Salah-Cazanas takes classical Nouvelle Vague-motives and intervenes them with a modern portrait of postmodern „class-basterd“ adolescents (as Labidi calls himself and his generation) who are stuck between opportunities, ambition und new limitations of our current time which can't grant a desireable future for everyone.

Christian Klosz lives in Vienna and is the editor-in-chief of Austrian film magazine Film plus Kritik. https://filmpluskritik.com