Berlin

With "Gulyabani", the Berlin Critics’ Week presents the new film by Turkish experimental filmmaker Gürcan Keltek. Although Keltek's politicised film work made it impossible for him to screen his film "Meteors" in Turkey, the film turned him into one of recent Turkish cinema’s most prominent voices internationally. Through free-flowing montages, his new film interweaves political violence with the oppression of the feminine and with a magical understanding of history.

The artist Theresa Traoré Dahlberg ("Ouaga Girls", "Taxi Sister") recently shot the documentary essay "The Ambassador's Wife". Her experiences in Europe, Africa and the United States gave rise to a transcultural contemplation of the wife of the French ambassador to Burkina Faso. Surrounded by employees in a magnificent villa, she dreams of a career as an opera singer. In a double programme with Virgil Vernier's new feature "Sophia Antipolis", the film opens up a negotiation space for the political staging of social tensions. Not least through "Mercuriales", Vernier has become known for his critical observations of urban life in contemporary France. His new film uses the eponymous technology park near Antibes on the Côte d'Azur as a backdrop for beguilingly oppressive images of the present.

The 5th Berlin Critics’ Week will take place from 6 to 14 February 2019. The film programme starts on Thursday 7 February at the Hackesche Höfe cinema.

Press contact: Jendrik Walendy presse@wochederkritik.de

Berlin Critics Week is organized by the German Film Critics’ Association and funded by the Capital Cultural Fund, the Stiftung Kulturwerk of VG Bild-Kunst and the Rudolf Augstein Foundation.