The Berlin Film Festival’s 70th Anniversary edition is happening in 2020. The prestigious Berlinale will be kicking off its latest edition on February 20th with a new head director -Dieter Kosslick- who has big plans to reorganize the festival, not to mention former Locarno programmer Mark Peransen becoming Kosslick’s new head of programming.
Longtime attendees may no doubt be divided by these plans to restructure the Berlinale. If you remember, Kosslick also signed the Gender Parity 2020 pledge so that the male/female split would be 50/50 at this year’s fest. I don’t want to get started on that issue, as I have my own skepticism about forced-upon parity at film festivals instead of letting the parity naturally evolve into a 50/50 split. Alas, The announcement of the competition titles for the 70th edition of the Berlinale will be made on December 12th. As is usually the case, a few Sundance titles will, no doubt. be dripping into the Berlinale program again this year.
With all this being said, what films do we expect to show up? I have assembled the 21 best bets:
The French Dispatch (Wes Anderson)
Rebecca (Ben Wheatley)
Molly (Sally Potter)
One Second (Zhang Yimou)
Druk (Thomas Vinterberg)
Eté 84 (Francois Ozon)
The Souvenir: Part II (Joanna Hogg)
First Cow (Kelly Reichardt)
Nomadland (Chloe Zhao)
Undine (Christian Petzold)
Charlatan (Agnieszka Holland)
Bergman Island (Mia Hansen-Love)
The Story of My Wife (Ildikó Enyedi)
The Invisible Man (Leigh Whannell)
The Secret Garden (Marc Munden)
Emma (Autumn de Wilde)
Little Fish (Chad Hartigan)
Notturno (Zu Quirke)
Tora-san, Welcome Back (Yoji Yamada)
The Postcard Killings (Danis Tanovic)
The Salt of Tears (Philippe Garrel)