Berlinale 2025 (75): All reviews – Honey Bunch; Sorda; Yunan; The Settlement; The Incredible Snow Woman; The Safe House

We review the non South Asian films we saw at the Berlin International Film Festival, known as commonly as Berlinale… See links for South Asian films that premiered in Berlin (February 13-23) at the bottom

Honey Bunch – Macabre, leftfield, mixed emotions

Director: Madeline Sims-Fewer & Dusty Mancinelli
98 minutes

SURREALIST SCI-FI masterpiece or OTT macabre love story that runs out of control?
Judging from the reaction of the audience at one of the last screenings of Berlinale 75, it was very much the former but personally speaking I found it self-indulgent and difficult to follow. Set in the 1950s (though never specified – nor is the location, but it is North American), it is centred around Diana (Grace Glowicki) and her husband/partner Homer (Ben Petrie).
They arrive at a specialist trauma facility; Diana is suffering from considerable memory loss and her husband is desperate she recover following a near fatal car accident. Between several genres, mystery, spooky horror and sci-fi, there are excellent performances, especially from Glowicki and some of the scenes are well done, but it ended up in a strange place after several macabre and quite shocking discoveries. If you like your cinema leftfield and out of the box and want to be challenged, you might like this. Usually I do, but this didn’t seem to be coherent or well enough signposted to work personally. Maybe just me. (Sailesh Ram–SR).

ACV rating: ** (out of five)

Sorda – beautifully executed and composed film

Eva Libertad
99 mins

THIS is a rich and powerful tale and tells much more than the obvious on the face of it – when a deaf woman becomes a mother and her hearing partner’s attitude sows discord.
At the beginning they are a loving, empathetic couple deeply in love and the child is much welcomed and pampered over by the mother’s own hearing parents.
But slowly, we see how one community – the hearing – plays off against the other – the deaf. Eva has a loving and fun set of deaf friends – here, there are children both deaf and hearing but the odd one out is the hearing one who is truculent and impatient. Over time, we see how the dynamics change between Angela (Miriam Garlo) and Hector (Álvaro Cervantes). Eva Libertad’s film is an insightful reflection on difference and while the film has particular personal relevance as someone with significant hearing loss (about half of what is common), it also shows at one level what happens when you marry outside your community or tribe, and how that can affect you on a level you rarely understand when you are in love and committed. Incidentally, Garlo is Libertad’s sister. Impressive and thoroughly deserving of its Berlinale Audience Award. (SR)

ACV rating: ***** (five out of five, we might be a bit bias, was emotional watching).

Yunan – Suicide, imagination and alienation

A SYRIAN refugee writer feels lonely and isolated and travels to a remote German island to commit suicide – that is the basic premise. While he can speak good German and a has a female partner, he is wracked by insecurity and feeling adrift.
Mixing fantasy, reality and folk tales, this is a beautiful, gentle film with an admirable punch. Held strongly by a wonderful central performance by Georges Khabbaz and a fine supporting one by Hanna Schygulla director Ameer Fakher Eldin’s film is something of a deeper meditation on the purpose of life and how does our interior life match the one outside and beyond. For the philosophers among us.

ACV rating: ***

The Settlement – Privilege and privation in tense factory set drama

Mohamed Rashad
94 minutes

SLICK and brisk, this is another tale that gets beyond the mundane surfaces and probes far deeper but within a tale that is easily relatable.
Hossam (Adham Shoukry) has returned home – from where we don’t know at the beginning but do later – to take up a job at the factory where his father suffered a premature accidental death at his place of work which appears to be a heavy machine assembly plant in Egypt.
In what some countries probably have – there is a compassionate scheme where a family member can fill the vacancy left – provided there is no legal action or sanction against the employer. Hossam is keen to do well and keep himself out of trouble and his little brother Maro (Zeyad Islam) is only 12 and – clearly the factory employers don’t care – also tags along to work there. The family unit is held together by their long-suffering mother. Trouble begins when the employers start to lean on Hossam for favours that are not inside the law. From here, there is only one outcome – well produced, and acted, there is also some insight into how young people date in such countries, able director Mohamad Rashad shows a deft hand and is a welcome presence on the world stage as an Egyptian director with developing power.

Acv rating: ****

The Incredible Snow Woman – Glossy, sweet and fine ensemble

Sebastian Betbeder
101 mins

WE DON’T know if this is based on a true story but it’s very well done, if fairly commercial and straight at one level.
Coline Morel (Bianche Gardin) is a bit wild and likes to spend her time in the arctic wastelands when we first meet her.
Returning home – we assume to rest and recuperate from that trip – she sets about writing the latest from her journal or memoir at the farmhouse in the mountains where she grew up. Also at the house is her loving (gay) brother and another brother who arrives later into the story. They are orphans.
De-stabilised by her recent divorce, she gets drunk and flirts outrageously with the teenage son of her ex-lover schoolfriend – now a teacher and married to another of their schoolfriends. In a more lucid scene, she admits she is an attention seeker and suffers from a bipolar condition.
We end up in Greenland and there seems a certain beauty and equilibrium to the life she creates there, among an indigenous community. Slowly, after her brothers visit, we realise and accept her, as they do. A superb central performance from Gardin and Sebastian Betbeder’s film has a lot going for it as a commercial product.

Acv rating: *** ½

La Cache/The Safe House – Quirky, comic and New Wave homage

Lionel Baier
98 mins

SET during the Paris and French riots of 1967, you will either find this funny, charming and knowing or irritating, self-indulgent and wasteful. Dare we say it, but we are in the former camp. Ha. Perhaps our fascination, attachment and pretentious leanings towards New Wave French Cinema (tongue firmly in cheek) lend us toward considering Lionel Baier’s film on its own terms.
Again, a highly eccentric family with a doctor grandad, a writerly grandmother and parents out protesting mostly – nine year old ‘Garcon’ (Ethan Chimienti) has to make his own entertainment. At least his two uncles and as his grandparents are ready to indulge him. There are of course shades of Godard and Truffaut, and we enjoyed the comedy, the satire and the affection displayed towards intellectuals caught up in their own merry world.

Acv rating:****

For all coverage of Berlinale 75 – some in real time during the festival itself

All pictures also courtesy of Berlinale 75 press