protean depravity

The Final Girls Film Festival Edition 11 is over...  The post-festival blues still lingering, here I am with a massive back pain the one week of sitting in City Kino Wedding bestowed me, thinking back of the awesome time I had. Being in the jury and contributing to determine the winner amongst the feature movies, all the great people I met, chatted, watched movies with, discussed those movies and connected... It would be no exaggeration to say I had the time of my life, and even though I didn't cry, I certainly understand fellow jury members who were hit hard by the melancholy. On the picture you see is all that's left from the good days: a lot of stickers and business cards, flyers for the Leiden B-Movie Festival in August, the festival program in which we're all featured, a tote bag, my name tag, and one piece of print art I bought from Henna Räsänen who was sitting at the table next to us, the Otherland table, during vendor day on Sunday. Let us first start with the shor...

As I've written before, this year's Berlinale was a bit frustrating and not all that amazing, but I was able to watch a couple of films nonetheless (even though most of them at the Uber Hall which is cold, and too big, and uncomfortable). I don't want to complain too much, though, I was still able to see nice films, just not super good ones. So this year there's no winner since none of the pictures struck me as great or wonderful or whatever. Here's a short overview of my film haul.

Well, I'm going to say it out loud, this year's Berlinale is a dud. Insanely quickly sold out tickets, a lukewarm selection of films, a lack of genre pictures in its program, and finally idiotic comments from the jury... Berlinale is already a fail and makes me want to look ahead for other festivals. Honestly, I'm not sure I'll give it much space in my future life, I think I'd rather save my leave days for the FFF and the Final Girls Berlin. Sorry for the rant.

...because that's when Berlinale starts again!

Are you still hanging on to the dated (and frankly, creepy) Oktoberfest, the fest of the drunks doing drunk things? Well, there's so much better fests and events in Berlin, and you needn't be drunk to endure them - in October alone we have not one but two indie genre film fests going, plus Halloween screenings, plus an author's evening with Samanta Schweblin who will present her new book (And it's possible another author will be presenting her new book at the Otherland, but I'll announce that when it is certain!). Let's take a look at what's coming up!

Another September has come, another Fantasy Filmfest has ended with nothing left behind but the memory of more or less awesome films and a week-long escape into other worlds (and, in my case, with a DVD set of a film I miraculously WON at the FFF! More about it under my review for Sweetness ⬇). I watched twelve feature films in total (I walked out on one of them because it was getting very late and I was worrying I might miss my last train as it was a week day), nineteen short films, of which three were animated and three stop motion. Let's see which ones I saw and my personal winners of this year's Fantasy Filmfest (There is an official winner of the festival you can find on their website  when they are through with every city on their program.)

  The 39th edition of  Fantasy Filmfest is just around the corner (3.9 – 10.9. in Berlin) and if you haven't gotten a festival pass (I know I haven't!) the tickets for the movies will be available from August 22nd, that is next week. So it was about time to draw a roadmap to have an overview of the screenings and weed out those that will be shown regularly while highlighting those I will probably not have a chance to see somewhere else. The reason I didn't get a festival pass is (I know I announced I'd go full program, but changed my mind) that even though the FFF announces on its website that the rows for the pass owners are reserved for them, there are a lot of pass owners who fill empty seats with their backpacks and coats and other stuff, and there's nothing more terrifying for an introvert to walk around the room, ask if the seat is empty and if yes, could they please put their stuff away, (possibly endure a side eye or two) and then sit next to that person yo...

There's a special kind of sadness reserved for the week after a film festival, and I'm going through that right now, post fantasy filmfest. I'm all the more sad because I only saw four movies this spring, although the complete lineup was fantastic and when I sat in my comfy seat at Zoo Palast, I felt that wish in me to just keep sitting and watching more movies, to watch them everyday for three-four days... (It's not that dramatic, they expect you to go out and walk around, eat something between movies and they actively make you stand up, so you don't have to die watching movies.) Let's look at the films I was able to see, not every one of them was amazing, I have to say, but at least one was!

Again, it's time to draw a new overview of what's expecting us in terms of horror movies in cinemas and film festivals and stream services in the next couple of months. And it looks good! Let's start with the upcoming Fantasy Filmfest Nights , which takes place between 8. - 11. May at the Zoo Palast cinema in Charlottenburg. I'm loving the entire selection this season, I often feel like the spring movies are even better than the original film festival which takes place in September. Short explanation for those unfamiliar with the FFF; the main festival takes place some time beginning of September, complemented by two mini-festivals, one end of January (or, like this year, beginning of February) and a second one in April or May. And I can safely say I was never disappointed by the spring screenings although I can't claim the same for the other two festivals. Maybe a coincidence. But anyway, let's take a look at the screenings I'm not missing. I always leave s...

As football legend Sepp Herberger said, "nach dem Spiel ist vor dem Spiel" (after the game is before the game), only it's "after the festival is before the festival" for me, because the next mini film festival, Fantasy Filmfest Nights, is already on the horizon - this year from May 8th until 11th. The tickets can be purchased from April 16th on, and the program has been out for a couple of weeks now! Don't forget that some of these movies will have a theatrical release at a later date, like Clown in the Cornfield, so it might be more economical to differentiate between movies you want to see at the festival and those that can be watched elsewhere - although I've really grown to enjoy the festival-atmosphere at the FFF, so I might as well prefer seeing all movies here. Let's take a look which movies I'm talking about... Full list of festival films can be found here !

With February gone, a wonderful film time lies behind me and I'm glad I was able to achieve most of my film goals, but also thrilled to be able to do so in smashingly crunchy, sunny weather and I can't imagine closing the winter time in a better way. The last station of Film February 2025 was The Final Girls Berlin Film Festival, which took place quite late this year, in March, but considering the Fantasy Filmfest White Nights and Berlinale both took place in succession in February, this was a good choice. I missed/passed all feature film screenings due to a combination of lack of time and lack of interest/already having seen most, but apart from the last two showings on Sunday, I watched all short films, which were divided into following blocks; Hostile Environments, Capitalist Horror, Het Horror, Cults, Midnight, Life Cycles, Pop Horror/Carnevalesque, Sensory Overload, Queer Horror, Revenge, Grief and Nightmares. As each year, I'm super happy with the Final Girls' sel...

These past two weeks Berlin wasn't only blessed with icy cold and incredibly sunny weather, there were also film lovers running all around the city because it was Berlinale time again! For the 75th time this year! Although the film selection wasn't necessarily the best of all time, it was decent enough and I had the chance to finally satisfy my hunger for lots of movies from around the world despite financial concerns (the tickets get more expensive by the year and it's going off my vacation budget), frustration over sold out showings, and lots of other personal stuff I had to take care of. I'm happy that I was able to join three screenings followed by director interviews, I think two of them were even premieres, and that despite the unsettling collective cacophony of coughing and sneezing and sniffling I made it out halfway healthy. Let's take a look at the films now, here's my festival in a nut shell!

The Fantasy Filmfest White Nights, a mini-festival which took place this past weekend, was both a lovely launch of Film February as well as a warm-up for the upcoming Berlinale (February 13-23) followed by the Final Girls Berlin Filmfest (March 5-9). So as to not exhaust myself and my finances early on, I only did two films per day, totaling four films; Above the Knee , Presence , MadS and Street Trash - I liked them all, although I have little critiques, comments and opinions I want to dump here. It is noteworthy that three out of four (horror) films I saw rely on narrative or technical methods that are experimental in nature. Now of course, I'm referring to my personal selection and not the entirety of the festival, and I may have been unconsciously drawn towards a certain kind of film, but I can assure that it wasn't apparent in their description, at least not necessarily for all of them. The thing is, it's awesome that more and more filmmakers dare breaking through the...

The German word "Vorfreude" which describes the happiness you feel before something, a "joyful anticipation" according to internet dictionaries, should be a word in every single language on this world for me to express the joy I yearly feel between New Year's Eve and the month of February when all my favorite film festivals and showings takes place. The constellation of those festivals is somewhat different in 2025, with the Fantasy Filmfest White Nights taking place as late as the first weekend of February and the Final Girls Berlin Film Festival even in March! Even with this shift, it's all fine by me, I have been blissfully busy in my joyful anticipation and putting bookmarks on films I want to see and buying tickets where I can.

We haven't even reached the middle mark of October yet, but turns out this month truly IS golden. Socializing with the science fiction crowd the last couple of weeks I was made aware of two more events which had escaped me, but I think are definitely worth visiting. The weekends are full this fall! Next Saturday, October 19th, the Berlin SciFi Filmfest opens its doors at the splendid Urania in Charlottenburg. This year's program is interesting as usual and consists of mostly short film screenings divided into thematic blocs such as Dystopia, Latin Science Fiction, Psychopunk (??!! I have no idea what this is but I already love it), AI, Canadian Science Fiction, and... Weirded Out , the bloc about weird fiction, unfortunately at 8 pm, the very last showing. It figures that the one bloc I want to see most would be the last, which gets me in a scrape. I have to work the morning shift at Hammett that day, and for the late evening I already have my ticket for the "In a Violen...

And here I go with the second part of my favorite FFF movies of this year's 38th edition. While writing these I realized that I watched and really enjoyed a lot of French and French language movies this past week. Having studied and spoken French for my whole life, but not being able to connect with the country per se, I actually miss French, just not the French, lol. I also enjoyed watching light-hearted movies and laughed a lot during this festival. Here are some more reviews, some funny, some serious.

Another September, another Fantasy Filmfest. And it has already ended, damn! As I mentioned before, I didn't find the lineup as a whole unanimously interesting, but a few picks ended up being partly OK, partly great for me, so let's take a look at them. There may be mild spoilers in what I discuss here, but I'll never give away the punchline of the respective films.

Ah yes, time to make movie plans again while gods laugh at me. Especially this year I have felt their filmic wrath upon me, more than ever. While it was the flu that knocked me off my socks in February, it is currently the concussion I have had since the beginning of July because of a shelf full of books falling on my head that I have had some problems ever since, like bad concentration, tiredness and not really being able to watch cinema due to eye problems. It is getting gradually better, and the chances are more than good I'll fully recover but it has intervened with my reading and movies. For other people this may be a minor inconvenience but books and movies are basically what I live for, so I also feel depressed ever since, since I also missed most of my planned visits to open air cinemas. I still have some time for that, if the weather plays along. Last week I caught the last GDR movie that was shown at the Freiluftbühne Weißensee, Jadup und Boel (1988), and it was unproble...

OK, everybody, I'm finally back at blogging and in the aftermath of The Fantasy Filmfest Nights, I have lots and lots of movies to talk about. First off - thank you Fantasy Filmfest, thank you so much, as I have missed almost all Berlinale in February this year due to illness and as a film freak I genuinely felt depression and the lack of my yearly filmic overdose weighed upon me. But you gave me back my light this past weekend. So, thank you!

So maybe this year gives me a brand-new second chance, an opportunity just like I have been wanting, having missed a big part of my beloved Berlinale due to sickness. I was really thrilled to see that there's a four day mini-fest, The Fantasy Filmfest Nights, taking place in April and their selection is perfect! A mixture of very international horror, action and humor, including one feature I painfully had to miss in February, awaits its audience at the beautiful Zoo Palast in spring. I decided to go full program this time to make up for the Berlinale debacle and pamper myself, but there's still some flicks I'm more enthusiastic about than others. Here they are!