Berlinale 2012: Simple Guide for the films in competition

Like every year after Sundance and when most of the film academies are still assessing what was the previous year, begins the first major film event in Europe: the International Film Festival in Berlin or, as commonly known, the Berlinale. Starting today and over the next ten days, the international jury chaired by British filmmaker Mike Leigh evaluate the nineteen films entering the competition is the 62 edition of the festival. And do not miss the rest of the components of the jury:

• Anton Corbijn: photographer, designer and Dutch filmmaker Anton Corbijn, who spoke yesterday about his upcoming adaptation of the novel by John Le Carre A Most Wanted Man
• Asghar Farhadi: winner of the Silver Bear in 2009 Darbareye Elly (About Elly), and Golden Bear in the latest edition of the Berlinale with the splendid Jodaeiye Nader ez Simin (A Separation), with whom he has also obtained Golden Globe and is nominated for two Academy Awards in Hollywood
• Charlotte Gainsbourg: French actress and singer who has dared not only twice with Lars von Trier, but is poised to third with The Nymphomaniac
• Jake Gyllenhaal: American actor best known for films like Donnie Darko, Brokeback Mountain, Zodiac or Source Code and who will next be seen in films like Nailed, directed by David O. Russell, and End of Watch, directed by David Ayer
• François Ozon: French filmmaker who was in competition at the Berlinale with Angel, in 2007, and Ricky, in 2009. If Potiche was premiered his latest film, opens this year Dans la maison
• Boualem Sansal: writer algeriano
• Barbara Sukowa: German actress known for his collaborations with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Lars von Trier or Margarathe von Trotta

A moi seule

Second feature film by French filmmaker Frédéric Videau that begins with a young woman sitting at a bus stop that includes a photograph of a missing child. It is your own photography eight years ago when she was kidnapped and Gaëlle from the world. Now you have to deal with their traumatic experience and a strange new world at large.

Aujoud'hui

Third Senegalese film director Alain Gomis, starring U.S. actor and musician Saul Williams, who challenges Satché Inter `, who knows and accepts that it is the last day of his life, though it feels strong and healthy. Walking the streets of his hometown, in Senegal, revisit places that were important in the past to look at last: the home of his parents, his first love, the friends of his youth, his wife and children . A time when it is once again hearing the same complaint: why not stay in America that would have a future? Satché faced his final moments full of fear, but with a feeling of joy.

Bai Lu Yuan (White Deer Plain)

From China comes the sixth film that adapts a Quan'an Wang Chen Zhongshi historical novel banned for many years to contain explicit sex. The story takes us to Imperial China that occur in the dramatic social and political changes, especially in the town which gives its name to the movie where two important families: Bai Lu, who have always lived in peace. Until a clash over land, through which there is a young newcomer, who is trapped between them.

Barbara

FIPRESCI Prize winner for Wolfsburg in the Panorama section of the edition of the saloon, 2003, after competing later in the official section Gespenster and Yella, the German director Christian Petzold returns for the third time the festival in Berlin. His film takes us to the summer of 1980, when a doctor, Barbara, an application to emigrate to the West. As punishment sent to a hospital in a small town far from the capital. Meanwhile, her boyfriend, in her West Side, plans his escape on the Baltic Sea. In your situation awaits your new apartment, your neighbors, summer and the countryside have no charm for Barbara. Although shown attentive to her patients, is cold distant colleagues in the department of pediatric surgery, especially with his new boss, Andre. She is convinced that her life will begin later. But Andre will get confused. First is his unswerving faith in their professional skills, then there is the way it cares for her, and finally his captivating smile. What makes Andre surprise you cover when helping them escape to Stella? Is he spying? Are you in love? Barbara begins to get confused about herself, her plans and her heart. Meanwhile, on the date of his escape.

Captive

Winner of Caligari by Shooter, Filipino Brillante Mendoza returns to compete in the Berlinale with a film starring Isabelle Huppert. A group of masked gunmen belonging to the Muslim group Abu Savyaf enter into a tourist hotel and kidnapped foreign tourists to twelve. The goal of the attackers were a group of World Bank employees who had already left the resort. The hostages are tourists and Christian missionaries are forced to march on foot through the Philippine jungle. Together, hostages and kidnappers will face together the forces of nature. Gradually the climate of fear prejudice and hatred leads them all to a strange symbiotic relationship. The contours comeinza to fade, the questions become certainties. Nothing seems to be the same thing again.

Cesare morire deve

The brothers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani were already prize of Berlin in 1972 with a cock AVEVA San Michele and in 1977 Padre Padrone. Thirty-five years after the festival again after six months rehearsing a performance of Julius Caesar with inmates in a maximum security prison in Rome. His film shows how the rehearsals of the play by William Shakespeare used them to understand their characters and immerse yourself in the game of friendship, tradition, power, dishonesty and violence.

Csak to szél (Just the Wind)

It is also the third time the festival is presented in the Hungarian filmmaker Fliegauf Bence, previously awarded Dealer, in 2004, and Rengeteg in 2003. Based on a series of real crimes that occurred in Hungary began with a gypsy family. The authors have escaped and no one claims to know who may have committed the murders. For a Roma family living nearby, crimes serve only to confirm their repressed and latent fears. Far away, the patriarch of a family decides that if wife, children and grandfather should join him as soon as possible. Living with the fear of racism around them and feeling abandoned by the silence of the majority, the family tries to overcome the day after the attack. When night falls, their beds are fairer than usual. Still, hopes to escape this madness seems illusory.

Dictation

Spanish director Antonio Chavarrías competes for the first time at the Berlin Film Festival with a film that includes in its cast of Juan Diego Botto and Nora Navas. It is a surreal psychological thriller that begins when a writer, Mario returns to the school where Daniel teaches. The professor is convinced that the writer is a ghost from her past repressed, which was buried in his subconscious. As children, most do become brothers, but the marriage between the mother of Mario and Daniel's father never materialized. This unexpected reunion brings families together again. On the death of Mario, which opens the veins, Daniel and his wife, Laura, take care of her daughter. Laura loves the girl from the time they know it, but Daniel is increasingly nervous about their presence. The demons of the past continue tormenting guilt ... until one day the past suddenly returns.

In Kongelig Affære (A Royal Affair)

The former writer of Man som hatear kvinnor (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), Dane Nikolaj Arcel, competes with his fourth feature as a director with a political thriller, romantic and tragic based on real events that happened in 1768. The physicist and doctor of the poor in Altona, Johann Friedrich Struensee, accompanies the king on a journey of a year touring Europe. During the trip wins the trust of the monarch psychologically unstable, which makes your personal physician. But it wants more, along with Queen Caroline Matilda, who falls for him, is in charge of state affairs. Committed to the great ideas of the European Enlightenment, freedom of expression concedde the press, eliminating torture and slavery, reform the education system and limits the privileges of the aristocracy. fearing for their power and wealth, aristocrats refuse to take this "blasphemous activity" and carry their reforms to trial.

Gnade (Mercy)

Awarded in 2006 by Der freie Wille, Germany's Matthias Glasner returns to the Berlinale with an intimate melodrama that takes place in Hammefest, a Norwegian town on the edge of the Arctic Ocean where the night lasts six months, for another six months following day, which is now home to a German family. Niels is an engineer working in a plant for liquefaction of natural gas located in a small island off Hammerfest. Mary is a nurse at a hospice mortals who has decided to support her husband in this professional adventure. The couple seem to have adapted to a permanent place in twilight until sinking, back home, Maria is involved in a crash that seems to have hit something or someone. unable to cope with the situation, flee in panic. The events continue on their way while the couple is faced with fundamental principles: Is it possible to live without mercy or having the ability to forgive?

Jayne Mansfield's Car

Much better known for his work as an actor, Billy Bob Thornton returns to filmmaking with this family drama whose cast is up Ray Stevenson, John Hurt, Kevin Bacon, Robert Duvall, Frances O'Connor, Robert Patrick, Tippi Heddren or Billy Bob Thornton himself. gathered by the death of a woman who first married Jim Caldwell the southern U.S., and then the British Kingsley Bedford, the two families meet Naomi for the first time. Culture shock in the sixties, between the two families serves as a backdrop to unleash rivalries, secrets, memories of war and how they formed three generations of parents and children.

Kebun binatang (Postcards form the Zoo)

With his second feature film director competes Indonesian Edwin, set in a zoo. A place for nostalgia in which the animals seek freedom, while visitors seeking adventure and wild call. It is in this environment, where it is not easy to imagine himself in another world, where grown wool. When I was little, his father left him in the zoo in Jakarta, where she was raised by zookeepers. What are the dreams and aspirations of a young woman who has lived among giraffes, elephants and hippos? How real is a cowboy who appears one day by magic or is it just a desire materialized? Lanase becomes his assistant and will take its first steps out of his world has been so far. But as it appears, the cowboy disappears and Lana will have to start working as a masseuse at a spa. But the memory of the cowboy and the nostalgia of the zoo will not let alone.

L'enfant d'en haut

Gillian Anderson and Léa Seydoux star in the second film as director of the French Ursula Meier. In a luxury ski station in Switzerland, a boy of 12 years, Simon, lives in an industrial valley, with its unemployed sister, Louise. Each day, take the chairlift up to an opulent world in which steals from rich tourists equipment for resale to the guys in your area. Associated with a British pickpocket working a season, Simon lost family ties, which affect the relationship with his sister.

Les adieux à la Reine

Again, Léa Seydoux, now with Diane Kruger stars in this film from French Benoît Jacquot, based on the novel by Chantal Thomasque portrays the early days of the French Revolution through the eyes of the servants of Versailles. A historical drama tinged with irony that have many parallels with the present.

Meteora

Spiros Stathoulopoulos second film, which brings us to the warm plains of central Greece, the Orthodox monasteries of Meteora, suspended between heaven and earth on sandstone pillars. Down in the valley, the eternal cycles of farm life: births, milking, slaughtering, provide a stark contrast to his ascetic world. The young monk and nun Theodoros Urania have given their lives to the strict rituals and practices of their community. A growing affection between the two places his monastic life in the pillory. Faced between spiritual devotion and human desires, they must choose the way forward.

Rebelle

Canadian film directed by Kim Nguyen focusing on cicil war in Africa. After his village is burned by rebels and their parents killed, Komona is forced to become a child soldier in the jungle. Its commander shines not only trained in the use of arms, but ordered to sleep with him. In search of sanctuary from the horror, is about an older boy with white hair whom he calls "Wizard" and who falls. After they escape together, Komona need to return to his people. He wants to bury their parents to avoid having to wander eternally through the scorched earth as ghosts.

Shadow Dancer

Starring Clive Owen, Gillian Anderson and Andrea Riseborough, renowned documentarian James Marsh presents his fourth competition feature film. As a child, Collette experienced firsthand the consequences of conflict in Northern Ireland when his younger brother was killed by British security forces. Years later, Collette has become a mother and, like the rest of the family, is involved in the Republican cause. When arrested for his involvement in an aborted bombing in London, a British service officer offers a deal: losing everything, including his young son, and go to prison for twenty years or back to Belfast to spy on its own family.

Tabu

Third Miguel Gomes Portuguese film whose film contains a veiled tribute to the film by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau. Aurora is an old woman, his housekeeper together in Cape Verde, came next to Pilar. This has become his life's purpose to do good. Not receiving any gratitude for their efforts, much less by the suspicious Aurora, who prefers to spend their meager savings in the tables in the casino of Estoril. When the old woman dies, Pilar come into contact with a former lover.

Was bleibt (Home for the Weekend)

Veteran festival, this is the fourth time that Hans-Christian Schmid competes at the Berlinale, where it already was awarded by films like Lichter, Requiem or Storm. In his thirties, Marko has lived in Berlin since the end of the university, far enough away from their parents, and Günte Gitte, whose way of life of middle class is not exactly his thing. He will pay a visit once or twice a year, mostly so they can spend some time with his grandson for five years, Zowie. Unemployment now is Marko who expects to spend a quiet weekend in the village of his parents and does not expect Gitte, who has been bipolar since I was a kid Marko, announces that leaves his medication after homeopathic treatment made you feel as ever. Gitte unexpected recovery plans Günter frustrated. Marko's younger brother, Jakob, and his girlfriend, Ella, are at a crossroads, while Jakob is ready to live near their parents, especially her mother together She hopes to pursue a career abroad. Marko acts as a catalyst and their presence leads to a confrontation that never breaks these truths and crumbling facade of harmonious family.