Movies

BERLIN — On a recent morning, the Berlin Film Festival’s two new co-directors were arguing about accents — specifically, what kind of voice should introduce the filmmakers in live announcements at this year’s event.“On this issue, I like an accent,” said Carlo Chatrian, its artistic director, adding that a non-native English speaker would best reflect Berlin’s cosmopolitan identity.“But we already have so many accents,” protested Mariette Rissenbeek, its executive director.When another team member floated the idea of a German person introducing the films in broken English, Rissenbeek winced. “No, no, no,” she said. “It cannot, under any circumstances, be embarrassing.” After erupting into laughter, the group agreed.This year’s Berlinale, as the festival is often called, will be the first time the event has been overseen by not one, but two leaders — an arrangement that proponents say allows specialists to focus on areas of expertise rather than having a single all-powerful figure responsible for both creative and business decisions.In an era when organizations are being scrutinized for gender disparities in leadership positions, it also allows a man and a woman to share the top role. In this case, Chatrian, 48, is responsible for programming decisions and Rissenbeek, 63, is handling logistics, staffing and finances for the event, which begins on Feb. 20 and runs through March 1.“With #MeToo, this idea of having autocratic, solitary rulers running cultural institutions began to change,” Andrea Hausmann, a professor at the Institute of Arts Management in Ludwigsburg, said in a telephone interview.The dual-director concept — known here as a “doppelspitze” — has existed in Europe and elsewhere for decades, and has become especially popular in Germany’s cultural sector in the last few years.The arrangement requires a level of coordination that can prove challenging, even to seasoned chiefs.Many hope it will help reinvigorate the Berlinale, which is considered one of Europe’s most important film festivals but has recently drawn accusations of lackluster curation. Chatrian, who was born in Italy, previously worked as the artistic director of the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, and Rissenbeek, who is from the Netherlands, led a promotional agency focused on German film.In a joint interview, Chatrian said the doppelspitze structure had allowed him to take a more hands-on curatorial approach than his predecessor, Dieter Kosslick, who oversaw the festival alone for 18 years. Under Kosslick’s leadership, the festival expanded significantly in size and scope.“Everyone was aware that Dieter had a lot of things on his plate,” Rissenbeek said. “If the activities grow time after time, you need to change the structure so people can cope with the amount of work.”In recent years, the Komische Oper opera company in Berlin, the Deutsches Museum in Munich and numerous state-funded theaters around the country have embraced the model. Tanztheater Wuppertal, the dance company founded by Pina Bausch, appointed joint leaders in 2018, with Bettina Wagner-Bergelt taking over the group’s artistic direction and Roger Christmann handling its business concerns.Ms. Wagner-Bergelt said the arrangement was a savvy way of ensuring a more by-the-books approach to money in the theater world.“For a long time there were gray zones where you could make agreements without contracts, for example,” she said in a telephone interview — whereas these days financial decisions need to be made with more attention to detail, ideally by people with a keen financial sense. “It’s like any other business now,” she said.Elsewhere the structure has proved ill-fated.In 2016, the Berlin State Ballet company announced the joint appointment of the contemporary choreographer Sasha Waltz and the more classically inclined Johannes Ohman as directors. The arrangement unraveled last month, after Ohman announced that he was leaving the company to take a job in Stockholm.At a tense news conference last week, Waltz suggested that she might continue in the role with a new partner, adding that the collapse of the partnership with Ohman “does not mean the model of a doppelspitze has failed.”Rissenbeek and Chatrian said their collaboration had, thus far, gone off without a hitch.“But we still have some time,” she joked, noting that the festival doesn’t start for a few weeks. “If he had said he wanted the opening film to be, I don’t know, a small, Russian black-and-white film that’s five hours long, I would have said it’s a no-go,” she added. “But he didn’t suggest it.”The Berlinale will instead kick off with “My Salinger Year,” a film by the Canadian director Philippe Falardeau. The film, starring Sigourney Weaver, focuses on a woman working for the writer J.D. Salinger’s literary agent.Chatrian estimated that he had watched around 800 films as part of the selection process, and said he had closely overseen the curation of all festival programs. “That would not have been possible if I had 10 meetings a day like Mariette,” he said.This year’s competition lineup will include a new film by the Berlinale favorite Christian Petzold, as well as works by noted art-house directors like Sally Potter, Kelly Reichardt and Philippe Garrel. “DAU. Natasha,” part of a notoriously long-gestating art project by the Russian director Ilya Khrzhanovsky, will also be shown in competition. The British actor Jeremy Irons will head the jury.Rissenbeek and Chatrian have made some structural changes to this year’s festival.Two programs — Culinary Cinema, focusing on food-related movies, and NATIVe, a section dedicated to films made by members of indigenous communities — were cut because, Chatrian explained, he had struggled to find enough features that met his standards. They also created a new section, called Encounters, dedicated to “aesthetically and structurally daring works from independent, innovative filmmakers.”The festival announced last week that it would suspend the Alfred Bauer Prize, an annual award named after the festival’s first director, which is typically given to a film that “opens new perspectives on cinematic art.” The prize’s suspension followed a report in the German newspaper Die Zeit revealing that Bauer had worked as a high-ranking functionary in the Nazi film bureaucracy.Critics have reacted to this year’s lineup with cautious optimism. Katja Nicodemus, a longtime Berlinale observer who is a reporter and critic with Die Zeit, said in an email that this year’s program seemed “intriguing and persuasively curated,” but noted that, like Dieter Kosslick, the new doppelspitze had not been able to attract the top ranks of auteur filmmakers to Berlin.“It seems largely reminiscent of Kosslick’s competition lineups,” Nicodemus said.Chatrian said that he expected criticism but added that, like his predecessor, he was aware of the need to balance more auteur-driven work with audience-pleasing films.“I think there is room for both,” he said. “In that respect, the identity of the Berlinale is not at stake.” More

“Watching the Academy Awards is always a difficult experience,” said Melissa Silverstein, the founder and publisher of Women and Hollywood, an online initiative that pushes for gender diversity and inclusion in the movie industry.“There are so few female filmmakers nominated,” Ms. Silverstein said. “We still live in a world where we can count the amount of women nominated for best director on one hand.”Gender parity in storytelling is Ms. Silverstein’s call to arms. She is also the artistic director and co-founder of the Athena Film Festival, which is dedicated to movies about female leaders. The 10th annual festival, at Barnard College, runs from Feb. 27 to March 1.Ms. Silverstein, 52, lives in a two-bedroom house in Park Slope, Brooklyn, with a roommate and her 70-pound shepherd mix, Duke. When the awards season hoopla dies down, she will get back to her latest project: the invitation-only Girls Club, a networking group for creative women.EVERYTHING’S FINE On Sundays I try to be a little more mindful, so I’ve started meditating with an app called Calm. It’s what I do first thing. You have to exit from the bed to do it. You have to sit up straight. It’s really good 10-minute meditations, not too much of a big commitment. The woman’s voice is really soothing. She tells you, “Everything’s fine, everything’s good.”PLAY DATE Then it’s Duke time. He dominates my existence. Depending on the weather, we try to head up to Prospect Park. It’s a big walk, almost a mile. Sometimes I go with my friend Richard Berne who lives on my block. His dog, Max, is a golden. Our dogs love each other. On the way back I stop off at Blue Sky Bakery. It’s a great muffin place in my neighborhood, and a locally owned business, which I like. Plus they make some nice dog treats.CATCH UP I do a little puttering on Sundays. I’m very good at puttering. I have some breakfast, or sometimes I’ll read. I use this app called Send to Kindle, so if there are articles I just can’t get to during the week, like from The New Yorker, I send them to my Kindle. Most of the stories are political.TALK TO ME I’ve also become super obsessed with audiobooks. If I don’t go to the park with Richard, I’ll probably sit and listen to an audiobook. I just finished Elizabeth Gilbert’s “City of Girls,” which I loved. I still think about it. The best book I’ve done on audiobook is Michelle Obama’s “Becoming.”MAINTENANCE I clean up a little. My house is very old, so a lot of things need to be WD-40’d. I’ll inevitably get on the computer. In this awards season I spend a lot of time responding to things going on with women and film.LOCAL OR LONG ISLAND Duke is going to need another walk. Sometimes we’ll walk to Greenlight Bookstore. I get a discount because of my membership with BAM. It’s also very dog-friendly.But we don’t go on the same walk all the time. You’ve got to challenge yourself. I might grab some lunch at Bergen Bagels, and then sometimes I’ll go over to BAM and watch a movie because it’s really close and they have great movies. Or sometimes I’ll take the train to Long Island to see my sisters and my parents. I grew up in Massapequa.POWER DOWN I like my Sunday nights to be not crazy. If I have to go somewhere formal on a Sunday night I’m like, “Whyyyyyy?” I try to power down. I’ve been a little obsessed with making turkey chili lately. I’ve got a crockpot and a good recipe. But I’m not a cook. I don’t pretend to be a cook.ABLUTIONS My bedtime ritual is not elaborate. It’s walk the dog and make sure I put some moisturizer on. Also this is very weird but I’m a big Waterpik user. I use my Waterpik every night because I have bad teeth.TV IN BED I’ve got one of those new platform beds so I can watch TV in my bed. It’s the best investment ever. I try to be asleep by 10:30 or 11 at the latest, but if it’s an awards night I’m not going to be chilling. There are so few opportunities where people pay attention to things like this, where you see how much work we have to do to create an inclusive industry, that I’m 100 percent working.Ms. Silverstein will be live-tweeting the Oscars this weekend @melsil. More

Best Picture✓ “1917”“Ford v Ferrari”“The Irishman”“Jojo Rabbit”“Joker”“Little Women”“Marriage Story”“Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood”“Parasite”As your Oscar-pool guru, I would be remiss in predicting any best-picture winner besides “1917.” The Sam Mendes-directed war movie has taken top honors from both the Producers and Directors guilds as well the director and drama prizes at the Golden Globes, and that’s the sort of awards-season war chest no other contender can compete with. Though it debuted late last year, “1917” is cresting at just the right time: After six weeks of release, it’s made more than $120 million domestically, and it occupied the No. 2 slot at the box office last weekend.But.I still can’t shake the feeling that “Parasite” could pull off an upset, in much the same way “Moonlight” vaulted over “La La Land” just three years ago. Bong Joon Ho’s widely loved South Korean thriller would be the first foreign-language film to win best picture, and by picking it, voters could help rehabilitate the academy’s reputation for being too insular and white. The film’s cast members garnered a standing ovation at the Screen Actors Guild Awards even before they won the top prize of the night. “Parasite” has passion, no doubt.Is that enough? I’m playing it safe with “1917,” but stay tuned: It’ll be close.Best Director✓ Sam Mendes, “1917”Martin Scorsese, “The Irishman”Todd Phillips, “Joker”Quentin Tarantino, “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood”Bong Joon Ho, “Parasite”Five of the last seven Oscar races have come down to a split in the top two categories, so is it possible that even if “1917” wins best picture, Bong could still be rewarded with the best-director Oscar? Yes, though I wouldn’t bet on it: When such a split occurs, the directing winner usually hails from the bigger, more technically audacious film, and that describes Mendes and his long-take war movie to a T.Best Actor✓ Joaquin Phoenix, “Joker”Antonio Banderas, “Pain and Glory”Leonardo DiCaprio, “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood”Adam Driver, “Marriage Story”Jonathan Pryce, “The Two Popes”Oscar voters are drawn to the tangible act of transformation, and though many of the nominees in this category are playing against type — including DiCaprio as a washed-up actor and Banderas as a quiet artist wrestling with pain — there is no more ostentatious act of transformation than Phoenix’s wrenching, intensely physical performance as the Joker. Considered by many to be the best actor of his generation, Phoenix has never won an Oscar. That will change on Sunday.Best Actress✓ Renée Zellweger, “Judy”Cynthia Erivo, “Harriet”Scarlett Johansson, “Marriage Story”Saoirse Ronan, “Little Women”Charlize Theron, “Bombshell”Sixteen years after Zellweger was awarded her first Oscar, a supporting-actress trophy for “Cold Mountain,” she will again return to the winner’s circle for playing a down-and-out Judy Garland in the last year of her life. None of the other contenders ever amassed enough momentum to truly compete with Zellweger, who’s been sitting pretty as the favorite all season. She’ll now become the 21st woman to win more than one Oscar for acting.Best Supporting Actor✓ Brad Pitt, “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood”Tom Hanks, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”Anthony Hopkins, “The Two Popes”Al Pacino, “The Irishman”Joe Pesci, “The Irishman”Though the 56-year-old Pitt already possesses an Oscar for producing the best-picture winner “12 Years a Slave,” he has never won an Academy Award for acting, and his confident performance in “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” offers a full-throttle testimonial to his star power. After charming and unexpectedly funny acceptance speeches at the Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild Awards, there’s no way Pitt goes home on Oscar night empty-handed. Don’t you want to know what he’ll say?Best Supporting Actress✓ Laura Dern, “Marriage Story”Kathy Bates, “Richard Jewell”Scarlett Johansson, “Jojo Rabbit”Florence Pugh, “Little Women”Margot Robbie, “Bombshell”Dern has a clear path to victory here: The only supporting-actress contender who had earned a comparable amount of buzz was the “Hustlers” star Jennifer Lopez, and she didn’t even make the list of five nominees. For voters who enjoyed “Marriage Story,” a vote for Dern ensures the movie won’t go home empty-handed, and the 52-year-old actress is an enormously well-liked figure enjoying the sort of career resurgence that Oscar is always eager to reward.Original Screenplay✓ “Parasite,” Bong Joon Ho, Han Jin Won“Knives Out,” Rian Johnson“Marriage Story,” Noah Baumbach“1917,” Sam Mendes and Krysty Wilson-Cairns“Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” Quentin TarantinoTarantino has won the original-screenplay Oscar twice before, so he can’t be counted out here. Still, the path to best picture almost always goes through one of the screenplay categories, and “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” has lost much of its momentum for the top award. The best-picture front-runner “1917” is probably too sparse a screenplay to win in this category, so I expect the win will go to twisty “Parasite,” the night’s other big contender for the top Oscar.Adapted Screenplay✓ “Jojo Rabbit,” Taika Waititi“The Irishman,” Steven Zaillian“Joker,” Todd Phillips, Scott Silver“Little Women,” Greta Gerwig“The Two Popes,” Anthony McCartenOscar voters caught a lot of flak when Gerwig failed to make the best-director race, and they may be tempted to make it up to her here. Still, I’d give the slim edge to Waititi, who won the Writers Guild Award in this category and whose performance in his own movie — as a jokey Adolf Hitler, no less — only lends him further star power that should put him over the top.International Feature✓ “Parasite,” South Korea“Corpus Christi,” Poland“Honeyland,” North Macedonia“Les Misérables,” France“Pain and Glory,” SpainOutside of the acting categories, this is one of the most foregone conclusions of the night: “Parasite” will surely prevail, giving South Korea its first victory in this Oscar race. The only question is whether some voters will deem this win sufficient, and then go on to choose a different movie in the best-picture category.Animated Feature✓ “Toy Story 4”“How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World”“I Lost My Body”“Klaus”“Missing Link”Oscar voters are loath to recognize a sequel in this category, and the last one to win was “Toy Story 3,” which may slow their enthusiasm for rewarding Pixar once more. Still, the field is scattered: “Missing Link” won the Golden Globe, “Klaus” swept the Annie awards, and Netflix’s “I Lost My Body” has highbrow fans, too. With votes all over the place and no singular, widely seen alternative to back, “Toy Story 4” is well-positioned to win.Documentary✓ “American Factory”“The Cave”“The Edge of Democracy”“For Sama”“Honeyland”“Honeyland,” about a beekeeper in North Macedonia, pulled off an impressive double nomination for documentary feature and international film. Still, this category is packed with powerhouse social-issues dramas, and the favorite has to be “American Factory,” which chronicles a culture clash between Chinese industrialists and hard-up American workers. The film has received a strong push from Netflix and counts no less than Barack and Michelle Obama among its backers.Visual Effects✓ “1917”“Avengers: Endgame”“The Irishman”“The Lion King”“Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker”Best-picture contenders typically have the edge over tentpole fare in this category, so while “The Lion King” certainly boasts the most effects, the ultimate contest should come down to “The Irishman” and its de-aging technology vs. the more seamless wartime enhancements of “1917.” Since Robert De Niro’s youthful C.G.I. makeover came in for some criticism, I suspect voters will choose “1917.”Film Editing✓ “Ford v Ferrari”“The Irishman”“Jojo Rabbit”“Joker”“Parasite”“Parasite” could pull this out if voters remember all those masterful sequences that track multiple character arcs as the suspense builds and builds, and if the film wins in this category, that would be a boon for its best-picture chances. But “Ford v Ferrari” is the obvious choice here, since its racing sequences would be nothing without fast and precise editing.Original Score✓ “Joker,” Hildur Gudnadottir“Little Women,” Alexandre Desplat“Marriage Story,” Randy Newman“1917,” Thomas Newman“Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” John WilliamsThomas Newman has been nominated in this category 14 times without a win, and though “1917” could earn the most Oscars of the night, I don’t think its score will triumph. At least Newman won’t lose to his cousin Randy, the composer for “Marriage Story”: Instead, both Newmans will probably fall to the Golden Globe and BAFTA winner Gudnadottir, whose striking compositions for “Joker” give a voice to the main character’s madness.Original Song✓ “(I’m Gonna) Love Me Again,” “Rocketman”“I Can’t Let You Throw Yourself Away,” “Toy Story 4”“I’m Standing With You,” “Breakthrough”“Into the Unknown,” “Frozen 2”“Stand Up,” “Harriet”“Let It Go” triumphed in this category seven years ago, but can the new Idina Menzel power ballad from “Frozen 2” win the same Oscar? It will face strong competition from Elton John’s end-credits “Rocketman” song, sung with the film’s star, Taron Egerton. Their duet, “(I’m Gonna) Love Me Again,” has already won the Golden Globe, and the snub of “Frozen 2” in the animated-film category suggests that voters aren’t eager to rubber-stamp a retread. In a close race, I’d give this one to Elton.Production Design✓ “1917”“The Irishman”“Jojo Rabbit”“Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood”“Parasite”This is one of the night’s trickiest three-way races. “Parasite” gave us the most memorable location of the year with the ultramodern Park house, but contemporary films only win in this category when they’re impressively futuristic (“Black Panther”) or self-consciously retro (“La La Land”). “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” masterfully recreates 1969 Los Angeles, but the film seems to have lost awards momentum. “1917” turns every new location into a striking set piece and the camera’s constancy allows plenty of time to explore those sets, so that’s my pick, even though I hope “Parasite” can pull it off.Cinematography✓ “1917,” Roger Deakins“The Irishman,” Rodrigo Prieto“Joker,” Lawrence Sher“The Lighthouse,” Jarin Blaschke“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” Robert RichardsonFor more than two decades, Deakins was one of Oscar’s most famous bridesmaids, but now that he’s in, he’s really in: After winning his first Academy Award, for “Blade Runner 2049,” just two years ago, the veteran cinematographer will earn a second statuette, for his fluid work on “1917.” If all those complicated long takes weren’t enough to clinch it for Deakins, the bravura nighttime sequence halfway through the film surely would be.Costume Design✓ “Little Women”“The Irishman”“Jojo Rabbit”“Joker”“Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood”With the recent exception of the world-building winners “Black Panther” and “Mad Max: Fury Road,” this Oscar almost always goes to a period film set in the distant past. That nixes “Joker,” “The Irishman” and “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” as films set in the 1960s and ’70s haven’t scored here since … well, the 1960s and ’70s. In the face-off between the colorful “Jojo Rabbit,” which won with the Costume Designers Guild, and BAFTA’s choice, “Little Women,” I’m picking the latter: When in doubt, go with the one that has the most frocks.Makeup and Hair✓ “Bombshell”“Joker”“Judy”“Maleficent: Mistress of Evil”“1917”It’s the first time that this category has expanded the number of nominees to five from the traditional three, but that hardly makes the contest any less of a blowout: “Bombshell” is guaranteed to win for its uncanny, prosthetics-aided transformation of Charlize Theron into the angular Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly.Sound Mixing✓ “1917”“Ad Astra”“Ford v Ferrari”“Joker”“Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood”“1917” seeks to place the viewer in the same impossible situations as its protagonists, and all those you-are-there long takes wouldn’t work half as well without a top-tier soundscape. Whizzing bullets, roaring waterfalls, the fairway footsteps of a potential friend or foe: “1917” has everything it needs to succeed here. War films and best-picture nominees are typically the best positioned in this category, and “1917” is both.Sound Editing✓ “1917”“Ford v Ferrari”“Joker”“Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood”“Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker”An idea was recently floated within the academy to combine both sound categories because many voters still don’t understand the difference between them. For the record: Sound editing has more to do with the creation of sounds, while sound mixing is about weaving those disparate sounds together. Whether voters know that or not, they will almost certainly pick “1917” to prevail in both races.Animated Short✓ “Hair Love”“Dcera”“Kitbull”“Memorable”“Sister”The two heaviest hitters here are Pixar’s “Kitbull,” which tracks an alley cat’s bond with an abused pit bull, and Sony’s “Hair Love,” about an African-American father struggling to do his young daughter’s hair. “Kitbull” benefits from being a little more rough around the edges than your usual Pixar short, but adorable animals are still a familiar sight in this category, and the specificity of “Hair Love” distinguishes it as a fresher pick.Live-Action Short✓ “The Neighbors’ Window”“Brotherhood”“Nefta Football Club”“Saria”“A Sister”Last year’s winner in this category, “Skin,” was an English-language short with recognizable actors that culminated in an obvious but effective twist. That pretty much describes this year’s front-runner, “The Neighbors’ Window,” which stars the Tony nominee Maria Dizzia as a harried New York mom who envies the young, glamorous couple in the apartment across the way until … well, I won’t spoil it. Though I found the eventual twist rather trite, it’s exactly the sort of thing that clicks with Oscar voters, and Dizzia is so committed that you’re inclined to just go with it.Documentary Short✓ “Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (if You’re a Girl)”“In the Absence”“Life Overtakes Me”“St. Louis Superman”“Walk Run Cha-Cha”“Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (if You’re a Girl)” has the best title in the field and also the best odds: This charmer about a skating school for young girls in Afghanistan is politically relevant enough to score with Oscar voters, but even more crucially, it sends the viewer out with a smile. More

In “Horse Girl,” Sarah (Alison Brie) is a mousy young woman undergoing a paranoid breakdown. As she spirals further from reason, the movie follows suit. We plunge into a prolonged nightmare of instability, both in terms of Sarah’s hallucinations and the movie’s reckless evocation of them.Streaming on Netflix, “Horse Girl” opens in a lucid reality, if a quirky one. It’s Sarah’s birthday, and her plans are nonexistent. Shy and a little socially off, she fails to connect with her Zumba classmates, likewise her cool-girl roommate. She wards off loneliness through peculiar obsessions, particularly a fantasy TV series called “Purgatory” and the horse she once owned, which she visits frequently enough to annoy its new owner and stablemen. The director Jeff Baena, who co-wrote the script with Brie, gently lingers on Sarah’s hobbies, helping us understand how they serve as armor against an emotionally taxing world.[embedded content]Then, in a dizzying change of mood, Sarah loses control. Her sleepwalking habit escalates into dangerous stretches of amnesia, and black magic from “Purgatory” worms its way into her perception of the real world. Sarah plainly scans as a woman with a psychiatric illness, and the few characters we trust — her sympathetic colleague (Molly Shannon) and refreshingly sweet love interest (John Reynolds) — share our concern.It would be tactful, at this point, for “Horse Girl” to show how Sarah’s hallucinations are causing her suffering; instead, it indulges them. When Sarah believes she’s being abducted by aliens, the movie unsettlingly takes her delusion at face value. The more time we spend inside her visions, the more we are invited to enable her, to shrug off our worry in favor of an absorbing paranormal mystery. “Horse Girl” delves into a troubled mind only to get lost among its oddities, forgetting the sensitivity that drew it there in the first place.Horse GirlRated R for nudity, drugs, and distress. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. More