Hub to play role at Berlin Film Fest
MOVIES
There will be a bit of Boston at this year's 67th Berlin Film Festival — the Hub's own Oscar-winning documentarian Laura Poitras (“Citizenfour”) is a member of the documentary jury. World premieres dominate this year's festival, which opens Thursday and ends Feb. 18, when its jury awards the Gold Bear for best film.
The Berlinale, as it is known, has 24 films in competition with 22 world premieres from, literally, around the world: Europe, Hong Kong, India, Japan, China, Lebanon, South Korea, Taiwan, Senegal and the U.S.
The festival opens with “Django,” a French biopic about jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, who fled Nazicontrolled France in 1943.
This cinematic showcase plays all over the capital city with sidebars for documentaries, children's films, culinary cinema and indigenous cinema from the Arctic. There's also an international film market, where deals are made for every kind of movie to be bought, sold and shown around the world.
Festivalgoers will be the first to see how Hugh Jackman, in world premiering “Logan,” bids farewell to Wolverine, the X-Men role that made the Aussie internationally famous.
Here too is “T2,” the 21-years-later — who's counting? — sequel to “Trainspotting” with original director Danny Boyle and stars Ewan McGregor, Robert Carlyle and Jonny Lee Miller (“Elementary”).
In competition is “The Dinner,” with Richard Gere, Laura Linney, Steve Coogan, Rebecca Hall and Chloe Sevigny.
Premiering out of competition:
Stanley Tucci's “Final Portrait,” with Geoffrey Rush and Armie Hammer; “The Queen of Spain,” with Penelope Cruz; and “Bend It Like Beckham” director Gurinder Chadha's “Viceroy's House,” with “Downton Abbey” patriarch Hugh Bonneville and “X-Files” icon Gillian Anderson.
The competition jury president is the often controversial Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven (“Basic Instinct,” “Showgirls” and the current Oscar-nominated “Elle”).
Joining him (and four others) are Maggie Gyllenhaal and “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” star Diego Luna.
Four-time Oscar-winning costume designer Milena Canonero (Stanley Kubrick's “A Clockwork Orange,” “Barry Lyndon,” “The Shining”; “The Godfather Part III”; Sofia Coppola's “Marie Antoinette”; “The Grand Budapest Hotel”) is honored with a retrospective.