09/02/2023 - The Berlin-based sales agent will be representing six titles at the festival, including Chinese filmmaker Zhang Lu’s competition entry

Sales agent Films Boutique has announced a robust and exciting slate for the impending Berlinale (running from 16-26 February) and the accompanying EFM (16-22 February). The six titles on its docket include Zhang Lu’s The Shadowless Tower in competition, and two highly anticipated Encounters entries: the “road movie” documentary The Klezmer Project [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Leandro Koch, Paloma Schach…
film profile] by co-directors Leandro Koch and Paloma Schachmann; and the innovative Hungarian animation White Plastic Sky [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Tibor Bánóczki, Sarolta Szabó
film profile], also jointly directed by Tibor Bánóczki and Sarolta Szabó.

The Berlin- and Lyon-based international sales agent continued burnishing its reputation as a home for artistic films by new and established talents with the success of Pacifiction [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Albert Serra
film profile] by Albert Serra, which competed at Cannes and was one of the major critical favourites of last year, along with Maryam Touzani’s The Blue Caftan [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], shortlisted for the International Feature Film Oscar this year.

Premiering during the festival’s first weekend, the “romantic and enchanting” The Shadowless Tower will showcase a rare and political view of the Chinese middle class, as it follows a divorced food critic who begins a relationship with a younger photographer. Legendary fifth-generation Chinese director Tian Zhaungzhaung also has a principal role in the cast. Previously a novelist, Zhang last competed at the Berlinale in 2007 with Desert Dream [+see also:
trailer
film profile], and Gyeongju, possibly his most popular film to date, was at Locarno in 2014.

Described as a “far cry from your average music documentary” and embracing hybrid forms, The Klezmer Project finds Koch and Schachmann meeting and falling in love at a Jewish wedding in Buenos Aires, and then embarking on a transcontinental project to search for lost klezmer melodies safeguarded by Romani, who lived alongside the Jews before World War II. Speaking to Screen International, Films Boutique COO Gabor Greine hailed it as a “crowd pleaser”.

White Plastic Sky is a sci-fi animation, incorporating 2D, 3D and rotoscoping techniques, set in a dystopian landscape where humans are bio-engineered at the age of 50 to become none other than trees. A co-production between Hungary and Slovakia, it marks the debut feature from Bánóczki and Szabó.

Rounding off the slate is The Burdened by Amr Gamal, the first Yemeni feature to be selected for the Berlinale (and notably co-produced by Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Film Festival), which is a Panorama entry. French documentary maker Claire Simon follows up the festival success of The Graduation [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] and I Want to Talk About Duras [+see also:
film review
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interview: Claire Simon
film profile] with Our Body [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] in Forum, an epic, observational study of a gynaecological clinic. And the momentum will continue for Jessica Woodworth’s Luka [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jessica Woodworth
film profile], which has just premiered successfully in IFFR’s Big Screen Competition.