Jan 25, 2023

Berlin International Film Festival Selects Makoto Shinkai's "Suzume" in Main Competition for the First Time Since "Spirited Away" in 2002

Makoto Shinkai's "Suzume" is the first animated film to be screened in the main competition at Berlin since Hayao Miyazaki's "Spirited Away" won the Golden Bear in 2002.

Written and directed by Shinkai, "Suzume" follows a teenage girl who struggles to close "doors of disaster" throughout Japan. Suzume embarks on a journey with a boy who is magically transformed into a chair.

The film is currently making phenomenal theatrical box office numbers in Japan, ranking 24th in Japanese box office history; it was released in November 2022 and was the second highest-grossing film in Japan last weekend, its 10th release. Its theatrical release in North America will begin on April 14 and will be distributed by Crunchyroll.

Iranian filmmaker Sepideh Farsi's animated feature "The Siren" will open the Panorama section of this year's Berlin International Film Festival. This screening is also the film's world premiere.

Farsi is a France-based filmmaker with extensive live-action experience, but The Siren is his animated feature debut. The film is a French-German-Luxembourg co-production between Special Touch and Bac Films.

Set in Abadan in 1980, the film begins with the discovery that Iran's oil capital is under siege by Iraq; 14-year-old Omid fails his military service and takes refuge with his grandfather. While waiting for his brother to return from the front lines, Omid meets several strangers and learns their reasons for staying in this seemingly hopeless town. As the violence increases, Omid begins to repair an old traditional boat, the Runge, to escape danger and save his loved ones.

The Berlinale Special section will feature Loriot's "Great Cartoon Review" and "100 Years of Disney Animation - a Shorts Celebration," a collection of classic Disney animated shorts.

This year's Berlin International Short Film Festival will also screen three animated shorts, "Eeva" by Morten Tšinakov and Lucija Mrzljak, "A Kinds of Testament" by Stephen Vuillemin and "The Waiting" by Volker Schlecht. The screening will also include three animated short films.

One animated feature, the Hungarian film "White Plastic Sky" by Tibor Bernotsky and Sarolta Chabot, was selected for the "Encounters" section of the Berlin International Film Festival. The film, which had its world premiere in Berlin, is a dystopian eco-fantasy set in a future Budapest where wildlife has disappeared, combining 2D and 3D animation and using rotoscoping.

As is traditionally the case, Berlin's "Generation Kplus" department has several animated films as part of its lineup.

This year's Berlin International Film Festival will take place in the German capital from February 16 to 26.