Queer TIFF: "Touch Me Not"

TIFF kicks off today!! In addition to our regular coverage, Chris Feil will be covering a sampling of the festival's LGBTQ global cinema...

Adina Pintilie’s Golden Bear-winning piece of experimentation and sexual reflection Touch Me Not opens on a landscape of the naked male body, anonymous and alien, shot with a deliberate distance that doesn’t deceive the film’s tension between curiosity, impulse, and terror. While this quickly establishes the psyche of Pintilie’s piece, it is about to become far more personal, with its players all playing themselves or versions thereof. Its fourth wall is never broken because it was never built in the first place.

The film centers largely on two emotionally stunted characters (or “characters”), struggling to experience both physical and emotional connection...

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Berlinale: Winners Roundup and More...

Seán McGovern completes his Berlinale coverage. Until next year's fest!

You're no-one in Berlin unless you're coughing, which is what 75% of people (myself included) have been doing this last week.

Negative temperatures make for more serious cinema goers, although 2018's edition had its share of sideswipes. The festival's director Dieter Kosslick has two years remaining before his tenure is up and many are anxiously awaiting a fresh vision. Nevertheless, Berlin has some of the most offbeat and independently-minded filmmakers showing their work, and the gems are absoultely there. Let's have a final look at some of the curiosities that may or may not end up in a cinema near you.

Golden Bear Winner - TOUCH ME NOT (dir. Adina Pintile, Romania/Germany/Czech Republic/Bulgaria/France)

The only premiere at the Berlinale Palast that I managed to go to also turned out to be the the winner of the Golden Bear...

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