Hallo to dozens of North American premieres and auf Wiedersehen to at-home movie watching
In a remarkable stand against the virus, and the events of the past two years, the Berlin & Beyond festival is back in a fully in-person capacity. That means everything will be in theaters and nothing will be streamed or zoomed. The festival, which plays March 11 through 16, will feature around a dozen new feature-length films — many making their North American premieres — as well as shorts, a director’s panel and more. Events are scheduled at the Castro Theatre, Landmark’s Aquarius in Palo Alto, Landmark’s Shattuck in Berkeley and The Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley. The opening night feature is a doozy; it’s the directing debut of Daniel Brühl, who is perhaps best known on these shores as race car driver Niki Lauda in 2013’s “Rush” and the fascinating villain “Zemo” in both “Captain America: Civil War” and “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” TV series on Disney+. His film, “Next Door,” is what they call a “two-hander.” Brühl plays a semi-famous movie actor, called “Daniel Weltz,” on the day of a big audition for a superhero movie. He stops at a quiet bar before heading to the airport, and is unnerved by the direct, unsettling stare of Bruno (Peter Kurth). At first, Bruno simply offers Daniel some searing criticism of some of his performances, before letting on that he knows some very unsettling things about Daniel’s life. It becomes a compact, punchy little chess game between two very different personalities, with a devastating payoff.
