A good opener can set the tone for the rest of a film programme. Ideally, the opener shouldn’t be the best film, because then the rest of your experience might be a bit of a downer; but it should at least be a good film, able to start the conversation on a genuine high note.
Small Things Like These (Tim Mielants, 2024) opened the competition today. It will certainly start an important conversation, but not because of its aesthetics. Meanwhile, Panorama opener Crossing (2024), Levan Akin’s much-anticipated follow-up to And Then We Danced (2019) is further proof of his unique knack for using the camera to highlight the very urgent dramas of his characters. Check out reviews for both below!
Small Things Like These. Faux Terence Davies
Written by Redmond Bacon
The Irish, at least in the movies, are world-class prevaricators. Beating around the bush is their national sport. The truth may be out there, but they’re never going to say it out loud. They will endlessly dance around the subject, couching any reservations they may have in euphemisms or diminishments. Case in point: Berlinale competition opener Small Things Like This (Tim Mielants, 2024), its very title downplaying the tragic, epic significance of its subject matter.
Downbeat, downtrodden and often downright defeatist, this poetic adaptation of Claire Keegan’s 2021 novella lives in the spaces between the said and the not-said, in how decades of human rights abuses were free to exist thanks to the particularly Irish tendency to avoid the bitter truth of the matter.
Cillian Murphy stars as Bill Furlong, a coal merchant shipping his wares all across town in remote County Wexford. His career is not incidental. By the mid-80s, powering houses entirely by coal already feels like an anomaly. And if it weren’t for the sounds of The Human League’s 1984 Christmas number one “Don’t You Want Me,” you might think this movie was set decades before.
Read the rest over at Journey Into Cinema!
Crossing by Levan Akin (2024) — Opening Panorama Film
Written by Jared Abbott
Let’s be real — aside from the big Sundance films and a few gems sprinkled about, the Panorama slate this year is pretty weak. Thankfully, Crossing, Levan Akin’s follow-up to Cannes hit And Then We Danced (2019), makes a solid choice for the opening night film.
It’s a thrilling, thoroughly modern and deeply human drama about looking for someone who may not want to be found.
The first ten seconds sum up its main character perfectly — a Georgian woman in her 60s with a striking face walks by a river. She carries a determined look that says, “Don’t fuck with me. I am on a mission.”
This is Lia (Mzia Arabuli), a retired schoolteacher who travels to Istanbul with her scruffy young neighbour Achi (Lucas Kankava) in search of Tekla, her transgender niece who seems to have disappeared. The bulk of the film combines this mismatched fish-out-of-water theme with a missing person setup with ease.
Read the rest over at Journey Into Cinema!