Berlin & Beyond + The Edge of Heaven.

In her preview of Berlin and Beyond: New Films From Germany, Austria and Switzerland, Nicole Gluckstern focuses on tomorrow night's opening film, The Edge of Heaven: "After exploring the tenuous alliances of family and homeland in 2002's Solino and the complex, at times violent bonds of love in 2004's Head-On, [Fatih Akin] meditates on death's unanticipated capacity to unite the living in his newest film. The slow pace and nonlinear construction of his latest offering might initially surprise audiences looking for the visceral force of his previous movies, but it's a surprise worth following to the film's introspective conclusion."

Updated through 1/11.

Nicholas Kulish profiles Akin for the New York Times and, as Ian Mundell reports in Variety, the Belgian Film Critics' Union has awarded its Grand Prix to Heaven. The film opens at New York's Film Forum on May 21. Earlier: Reviews from Cannes.

Back in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Cheryl Eddy reviews the shortish doc Heavy Metal in the Country: "Andreas Geiger turns his camera on his hometown of Donzdorf, Germany, a tidy little village containing half-timber houses, oompah band-loving old-timers, and the hugely successful metal label Nuclear Blast."

Update, 1/11: "The relationship between Germany and its eastern neighbor, Poland, informs my favorite work in the program (based on a sampling of about a third of the lineup)," writes Michael Fox at SF360. "In Robert Thalheim's partly autobiographical And Along Come Tourists, an aimless, nerdy German arrives in Auschwitz to fulfill his civil service obligation. Mocked by the Poles he meets, and treated like a half-wit servant by the elderly Jewish survivor in residence, Sven's blah life brightens when a pretty local girl befriends him. Tourists is a modest movie, yet it has profound things to say about the German response to the Holocaust in the 21st century."

Posted by dwhudson at January 9, 2008 3:00 PM