How India Scaled the Berlinale Wall

EVEN AMONGST 400 FILMS, NEW GEN INDIA MAKES ITS MARK

- Meenakshi Shedde

It’s that exciting time of year when the Berlin Film Festival, or Berlinale, one of the first A-list festivals in the calendar, comes around. Held from February 20 to March 1, the 70th edition of the festival will open with Philippe Falardeau’s My Salinger Year. Starring Sigourney Weaver and Margaret Qualley, it follows Joanna, assistant to literary agent Margaret, whose job is to answer the fan mail of cult author J.D. Salinger. Headed this year by artistic director Carlo Chatrian, the Berlinale will screen about 400 films of all genres, including fiction, documentary, shorts, animation and children’s and experimental films.

It’s a sign of the times that Johnny Depp (of Pirates of the Caribbean fame) now stars in the docu-fiction film Minamata, as war photographer W. Eugene Smith, who documents the devastating effect of mercury poisoning on locals in Minamata, Japan. The other keenly awaited films include Abel Ferrara’s Siberia starring Willem Dafoe, and Sally Potter’s The Roads Not Taken starring Javier Bardem, Elle Fanning and Salma Hayek. From Asia, there’s Hong Sangsoo’s The Woman Who Ran (Korea) and Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue by Jia Zhangke (China).