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South China Morning Post
25-02-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
Berlin 2025: 10 of the festival's best films, from The Light to Dreams and Islands
Right from the off, there was heavy snow on the streets and a chill wind blowing through the 75th Berlin International Film Festival. Advertisement Politics has often dominated this particular cinematic gathering, and this year was no different. On the opening night, jury head Todd Haynes bashed US President Donlad Trump and honorary Golden Bear winner Tilda Swinton warned that 'the inhumane is being perpetrated on our watch'. The spectre of global conflict also loomed large in the selection of films by artistic director Tricia Tuttle. While the jury's choice of Norwegian film Dreams (Sex Love) as the Golden Bear winner was not politically motivated, the Berlinale reminded us that festivals are prime platforms to inspire debate. Producers Yngve Saether (left) and Hege Hauff Hvattum and director and screenwriter Dag Johan Haugerud (centre) with the Golden Bear for best film for Dreams (Sex Love) at the Berlin film festival. Photo: AFP Here are 10 of the best films screened at this year's festival. 1. Queerpanorama
South China Morning Post
23-02-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
Coming-of-age drama, Chinese director win Berlin film festival awards
Published: 9:47am, 23 Feb 2025 Updated: 9:48am, 23 Feb 2025 Dreams (Sex Love) , a tender coming-of-age drama about a young woman's first crush on a teacher and the art of writing won the Golden Bear top prize at the 75th Berlin Film Festival. The grand jury Silver Bear prize was awarded to Brazilian filmmaker Gabriel Mascaro's film The Blue Trail , a dystopian story set in the Amazon about an elderly woman who chooses to reject living the rest of her life in a senior housing colony. Chinese director Huo Meng won best director for Living the Land , his feature about four generations of farmers. The Golden Bear-winning film by Dag Johan Haugerud, starring Ella Overbye, is the last in a three-part series by the Norwegian director exploring emotional and physical intimacy. Chinese film director Huo Meng waves to the audience as he leaves the stage after being awarded the Silver Bear for best director for his film Living the Land in Berlin. Photo: AFP The jury president, American director Todd Haynes, praised the film's flawless performances and clear-sighted observations about desire, and how it portrayed the act of writing.
Yahoo
23-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Dreams (Sex Love)' Review: Dag Johan Haugerud's Golden Bear Winner Takes An Unexpected Look At The Mystery Of Desire
Refreshingly unexpected, Dag Johan Haugerud's Dreams (Sex Love) — the first Norwegian film to win the Berlinale's Golden Bear — breathes new life into the often oversimplified genre of sexual awakening that seems to draw on his twinned career in both cinema and books. This headlong, hyper-nuanced account of a teenage girl's first love fuses the interiority of novels and the sensuous embrace of cinema in ways that other films fumble. Led by a smartly underplayed performance by Ella Øverbye, this third, stand-alone entry in a trilogy (released in Norway last October) moves engrossingly between her romantic entrancement and insightful commentary, both her own and her family's. Seventeen-year-old Johanne (Øverbye) is a subdued, pensive teen who seems swaddled in cozy scarves and the Nordic light, taking in more of the world than she ever says aloud. She's surprised by her stirrings of interest in a kind, self-effacing French teacher (Selome Emnetu), and lies around simply trying to figure out what's happening to her. A desire suffuses her, but she gazes at her teacher less as if struck by a lightning bolt and more with the focus of a candle's glow, quietly mesmerized. Her friends sense something's brewing and cluelessly suggest a therapy app; Johanne in turn is gripped by the need to reach out to her teacher, with whom she imagines a certain connection that might not be there. More from Deadline Veteran Korean Actor Kwon Hae-hyo Talks 30-Year Career & Hong Sang-soo's 'What Does That Nature Say to You' - Berlin Film Festival Berlin Film Festival: Norwegian Film 'Dreams (Sex Love)' Wins Golden Bear, Andrew Scott & Rose Byrne Take Acting Honors - Full List Vivian Qu Talks Feminist Thriller 'Girls On Wire' & Frenzied Berlin Red Carpet As Fans Go Wild For Wen Qi & Liu Haocun: "The Screaming Was Louder Than For Timothée" From the start, we're privy to Johanne's ruminations in her daily life through the film's extensive voiceover, which is both written and delivered with a confident fluidity. However overwhelmed and even paralyzed she might feel about her attraction, she's constantly sorting through her feelings and reactions. When she rashly decides to show up at her teacher's doorstep, that visit and the ones that follow are dominated by her reflective narration, which, rather than having a distancing effect, attunes us to the mood and physicality of each moment. Obsessed, Johanne puts her experiences down on paper and entrusts the results to her grandmother, Karin (Anne Marit Jacobsen), an erudite poet living among packed bookshelves. Karin's a sympathetic reader, and less easily shocked than Johanna's mom, Kristin (Ane Dahl Torp), with whom she feels compelled to share the novella-like work. With this sharing of Johanna's inner world, the female-centered Dreams naturally starts phasing in scenes between mother and grandmother that lie completely outside of the teenager's perspective, and reveal subtle generational and personal differences. The older women's responses keep evolving, but Johanne's mom does understandably worry that the teacher has abused her daughter (who's a realistic, adolescent blend of perceptive and naive). It's worth mentioning that Johanne's self-discovery is not portrayed in terms of sexual abandon; when she visits her teacher's flat, it's (almost laughably) for knitting lessons, which have the feel of a lazy, honeyed-tea afternoon. What she commits to paper is another story, however, with explicit detail that raises both her mother and grandmother's eyebrows. But whether Johanne's piece is believed to be true, semi-fiction, idealized, or something else, all feels less important than her own emotionally accurate characterization: it's about her life. That points to another awakening which filmmaker-novelist Haugerud captures so well: the parallel thread of Johanne finding her literary voice. The encouragement of her grandmother gives her a context (as well as surfacing some resentment about her own career), but Johanne still must learn to weather the slippage between what she writes and what people see in her writing. There's also a sense of how the family's relative privilege comes into play, not just in Johanne's upbringing (with access to a country cabin), but also through Karin's point-of-view as a battle-weary feminist activist, who groaned over Kristin's love of Flashdance as a kid. Perhaps another facet of the stability granted by this privilege is that Dreams doesn't lean into Johanne's formative experience as being a same-sex attraction. Haugerud's script even questions the notion of framing it that way, part of the film's affectionate humor: Johanne pushes back when someone classifies her novel as 'a story of queer awakening,' in contrast to a vocal fellow student who introduces himself in class as 'illegal in 69 countries.' Above all, she is still feeling her way through her sensations, and precisely how she will label or express them seems partly a matter destined for her writing. (The teacher, also named Johanna, proves to be a work-in-progress herself, all too human in her own choices.) While Dreams might sound like a novelist's film, it's quite effectively staged, full of subtle decisions in blocking and how the story moves into or out of scenes (like a lovely forest hike between Karin and Kristin). Among the quotidian settings, Haugerud and DOP Cecilie Semec intersperse striking shots of dance and (oddly enough but effectively) vertiginous stairways. One could imagine so much of the film's touches getting reworked in a screenwriting lab — curtail that voiceover, build up the best friend, etc. Fortunately Haugerud and Overbye remain committed to the mystery of desire and the work-in-progress that is life. Review: Title: Dreams (Sex Love) (Drømmer)Festival: Berlin (Competition)Director-screenwriter: Dag Johan HaugerudCast: Ella Øverbye, Selome Emnetu, Ane Dahl Torp, Anne Marit JacobsenSales agent: m-appealRunning time: 1 hr 50 mins Best of Deadline 'The White Lotus' Season 3 Release Schedule: When Do New Episodes Arrive On Max? 'The White Lotus' Season 3: Everything We Know About The Cast, Premiere Date & More 2025 TV Series Renewals: Photo Gallery
New York Times
22-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Dreams,' Film About Teen Infatuation, Takes Top Prize at Berlin International Film Festival
The Norwegian drama 'Dreams (Sex Love),' a tender, often funny film by the director Dag Johan Haugerud, won the top prize at this year's Berlin International Film Festival. Part of a trilogy about contemporary relationships in the Norwegian capital of Oslo, the understated feature follows the consequences of a high school student's obsession with her teacher and her decision to write about their relationship. The other two installments, 'Sex' and 'Love,' premiered last year at the Berlin and Venice film festivals. In his acceptance speech, Haugerud said the film was about the act of 'writing and reading.' He added that people should 'write more and read more, it expands your mind.' He also praised the film's young star, Ella Overbye, whose warm, finely calibrated performance carries much of the film. The American director Todd Haynes led this year's jury, which included the Chinese actress Fan Bingbing, the German filmmaker and actress Maria Schrader, and the Los Angeles Times film critic Amy Nicholson. The runner-up prize went to 'The Blue Trail,' a Brazilian film set in a society in which people above the age of 77 are sent to a 'colony.' It was one of the most praised titles in competition at the Berlinale, as the festival is known in Germany. 'The Message,' a film from Argentina about a girl who claims to communicate with animals, won the special jury prize. In his speech, the director Iván Fund said the award represented a 'counterweight' to the government's drastic cuts to the cultural sector under President Javier Milei. 'Cinema is under attack,' Fund said, but 'film cannot be undone.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Reuters
22-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Reuters
Norwegian film "Dreams (Sex Love)" wins Berlin Film Festival's Golden Bear top prize
BERLIN, Feb 22 (Reuters) - The Norwegian drama "Dreams (Sex Love)" by director Dag Johan Haugerud about a young woman's sexual awakening won the Golden Bear top prize at the 75th Berlin Film Festival on Saturday. The film starring Ella Overbye is the last part of Haugerud's trilogy exploring emotional and physical intimacy. The second prize Silver Bear was awarded to Brazilian filmmaker Gabriel Mascaro's film "The Blue Trail", a dystopian story about ageing set in the Amazon.
