Though Sundance is just around the corner, and SXSW just recently announced its first wave of programming, there’s another big festival with big announcements of its own. The Berlin Film Festival is expected to announce its full lineup later this month, but for the time being we are getting a hint of what’s to come, in the form of a newly announced programming section “Encounters.”
Created to support new voices in cinema and to give more room to diverse narrative and documentary films in the program, the new section will run alongside the Competition and Berlinale Shorts sections, which award the Golden and Silver Bears respectively. A three-member jury will choose the Best Film, Best Director, and Special Jury Award winners, though the jury members haven’t been announced yet.
“As a result of passionate research, the 15 titles chosen for Encounters present the vitality of cinema in all of its forms,” said Carlo Chatrian, Artistic Director of the Berlinale in a press release. “The films take the challenge of shaping a world rather than reproducing it.”
Among the newly announced titles in the section is Cristi Puiu’s “Malmkrog,” a “journey through time and through” that follows an elite group of individuals converging on a country estate and discussing the Antichrist, progress and morality, which will open the section next month. Tim Sutton’s latest film, “Funny Face” is also scheduled to premiere. Every feature in the programming section is receiving its world premiere at the festival with the exception of Josephine Decker’s “Shirley” which has Elisabeth Moss play horror writer Shirley Jackson, and will world premiere at Sundance before having its international premiere in Berlin.
The 2020 Berlin Film Festival kicks off on February 20.
To coincide with the announcement, the first two clips of Puiu’s “Malmkrog” were released: