The Berlin film festival opened Thursday with a premiere from Chinese director Wang Quan’an that follows the bittersweet reunion of a couple divided for decades across the Taiwan Strait.
“Apart Together” marked Wang’s return to Berlin after winning the festival’s top Golden Bear award with “Tuya’s Marriage” in 2007. It is the first of 20 movies competing for honors at the event’s 60th edition — the first of the year’s major European film festivals.
In keeping with Berlin’s traditional mix of star power with a global perspective, this year’s competitors range from Wang’s film to entries from Bosnia and Iran and even to Roman Polanski’s new movie, “The Ghost Writer.”
Set in fast-changing Shanghai, “Apart Together” tells the story of a man who returns to Shanghai a half-century after leaving mainland China during the civil war that divided Taiwan from China.
The former anti-communist Kuomintang soldier hopes to find his first love, whom he had to leave behind with their unborn son, but finds that she later set up a new family with a communist corporal. The movie explores the turbulence caused by their reunion.
The movie, starring 83-year-old Chinese actress Lisa Lu alongside Taiwanese singer Ling Feng, focuses on “people who are caught up in the flow of history,” Wang said.
“Reunification is something people in China really yearn for,” he added. “It’s tragic that our country is divided.”
The two sides split during a civil war in 1949, and Beijing sees self-governing Taiwan as a renegade province.
Festival director Dieter Kosslick says Wang’s film has symbolic value for the Berlin event — once a showcase of capitalist West Berlin — in a year that sees the 20th anniversary of German reunification.
The winners at this year’s Berlin festival will be chosen by a seven-member jury under German-born filmmaker Werner Herzog that includes actress Renee Zellweger.
Recent years have produced several surprise winners, with the top award going to relatively unheralded productions such as Wang’s “Tuya’s Marriage” and last year “The Milk of Sorrow” from young Peruvian director Claudia Llosa.
“I think it’s very important for young filmmakers to find a platform here,” said Herzog, who first appeared at the Berlin festival more than 40 years ago. “It was important for me back then.”
Zellweger said it would be “wonderful to get back to roots of watching the films and exploring, remembering what it is that makes you love this medium in the first place.”
The winners of the Golden Bear and other awards will be announced Feb. 20, and the festival ends on Feb. 21.
Festival site: http://www.berlinale.de/en/HomePage.html
Utah Leaders and Locals Rally To Keep Sundance Film Festival In The State
With the 2025 Sundance Film Festival underway, Utah leaders, locals and longtime attendees are making a final push — one that could include paying millions of dollars — to keep the world-renowned film festival as its directors consider uprooting.
Thousands of festivalgoers affixed bright yellow stickers to their winter coats that read "Keep Sundance in Utah" in a last-ditch effort to convince festival leadership and state officials to keep it in Park City, its home of 41 years.
Gov. Spencer Cox said previously that Utah would not throw as much money at the festival as other states hoping to lure it away. Now his office is urging the Legislature to carve out $3 million for Sundance in the state budget, weeks before the independent film festival is expected to pick a home for the next decade.
It could retain a small presence in picturesque Park City and center itself in nearby Salt Lake City, or move to another finalist — Cincinnati, Ohio, or Boulder, Colorado — beginning in 2027.
"Sundance is Utah, and Utah is Sundance. You can't really separate those two," Cox said. "This is your home, and we desperately hope it will be your home forever."
Last year's festival generated about $132 million for the state of Utah, according to Sundance's 2024 economic impact report.
Festival Director Eugene Hernandez told reporters last week that they had not made a final decision. An announcement is expected this year by early spring.
Colorado is trying to further sweeten its offer. The state is considering legislation giving up to $34 million in tax incentives to film festivals like Sundance through 2036 — on top of the $1.5 million in funds already approved to lure the Utah festival to its neighboring... Read More