All posts tagged: Berlinale 2026

Karim Aïnouz on Eviscerating the Super Rich in ‘Rosebush Pruning’

Karim Aïnouz on Eviscerating the Super Rich in ‘Rosebush Pruning’

Published by Daniella Wilson

“People are roses. Families are rosebushes. Rosebushes need pruning.” With that ominous metaphor, Ed [Callum Turner] introduces us to the super-rich, and sordidly dysfunctional, family at the center of Rosebush Pruning, the new film from acclaimed Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz (Firebrand, Motel Destino). They’re a pretty nasty bunch. Younger siblings Anna [Riley Keough] and Robert [Lukas Gage] are incest-curious, borderline psychotics. Their father (played by Tracey Letts) is a blind, soft-spoken, abusive tyrant. Eldest brother Jack [Jamie Bell] seems almost normal, though there, too, are signs of deep trauma. The American clan wallows in a life of pointless opulence in a Spanish villa, discussing designer clothes and snarking at servants and each other. But when Jack, the family lynchpin, announces he is moving in with his girlfriend, Martha [Elle Fanning], and Ed starts to unravel the truth surrounding the death of their mother [Pamela Anderson], things fall apart. The pruning is coming, and it will not be pretty. This modern-day take on Marco Bellocchio‘s radical 1965 satire Fists in the Pocket, adapted by frequent Yorgos …

Sandra Hüller on Playing a Woman Playing a Man in ‘Rose’

Sandra Hüller on Playing a Woman Playing a Man in ‘Rose’

Published by Daniella Wilson

The world is about to see a lot more of Sandra Hüller. The acclaimed German actress, Oscar-nominated for Anatomy of a Fall, whose long line of European arthouse triumphs includes Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest (2023), Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann (2016), and Hans-Christian Schmid’s Requiem (2006), is about to have a very big year, starring alongside Tom Cruise in Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s hotly anticipated dramedy Digger, and together with Ryan Gosling in the sci-fi feature Project Hail Mary from Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. But before you think Hüller has gone Hollywood, she is returning to the terrain that made her reputation. Markus Schleinzer’s stark black-and-white period drama Rose finds Hüller once again pushing herself to extremes. The film is set in the aftermath of the brutal Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), in which the death toll in some regions of Germany topped 50 percent of the population. Hüller plays a scarred, taciturn soldier, a woman who has long lived disguised as a man. She arrives at a small village to claim a long-abandoned farm, …

Next Big Thing Berlin: Luna Wedler

Next Big Thing Berlin: Luna Wedler

Published by Daniella Wilson

In the oldest cliché of the business, Luna Wedler has spent a decade becoming an overnight success. At 26, the Zurich-born German actress is suddenly everywhere — on streaming platforms, on festival red carpets, and, last fall, on the stage of Venice’s Sala Grande, where she collected the Marcello Mastroianni Award for best young actor for her powerful turn in Ildikó Enyedi’s triptych Silent Friend. The moment felt less like a breakthrough than a coronation, the European industry finally catching up with a performer who has been quietly proving, film by film, that she can do just about anything. Wedler fell into acting almost by accident. At 14, she tagged along with friends to an open casting call in Zurich and landed a role in Niklaus Hilber’s Amateur Teens. “I never had the dream of becoming an actress,” she tells THR. “But it became my great love, almost an addiction.” From the outset, she gravitated toward emotionally demanding material. Her first lead role, in Lisa Brühlmann’s Blue My Mind (2017), cast her as a teenage …