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 [+lire aussi :
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interview : Leandro Koch et Paloma Sch…
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interview : Tibor Bánóczki, Sarolta Sz…
fiche film], 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 [+lire aussi :
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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 [+lire aussi :
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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 [+lire aussi :
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interview : Claire Simon
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fiche film] in Forum, an epic, observational study of a gynaecological clinic. And the momentum will continue for Jessica Woodworth’s Luka [+lire aussi :
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interview : Jessica Woodworth
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