Dec 14, 2023
First Films in Panorama Confirmed: Counter Movements

Panorama is announcing its first eleven titles, seven of which are world premieres. A total of 16 countries have been involved in their production. First topics: rebellion and antiheroes. Nora Fingscheidt, Jérémy Clapin, Aslı Özge, Josef Hader, Ray Yeung, Jane Schoenbrun, Carmen Jaquier and Jan Gassmann are all presenting their latest films.

“I’m not everything I want to be” is how protagonist Libuše Jarcovjáková sums up her lifelong search for identity and belonging in the eponymous documentary portrait – constantly on the go, counteracting rigid systems and defying her own fate. “The photographer’s wild journey is symbolic of the stories we come across in the confirmed films,” says section head Michael Stütz, commenting on the selection so far.

In Nora Fingscheidt’s The Outrun, antihero Rona, played brilliantly by Saoirse Ronan, also has to go on a long journey to find herself: after years of excess in London, she seeks silence and self-reflection in her Scottish homeland. Birgit Minichmayr is travelling in the opposite direction as policewoman Andrea who is trying to escape the confines of provincial Austria in Josef Hader’s second feature-length film Andrea lässt sich scheiden (Andrea Gets a Divorce). Blending humour with melancholy, the director takes a look at lonely, drunken men and at a woman with a plan.

In Les Paradis de Diane (Paradises of Diane), Swiss directing duo Carmen Jaquier and Jan Gassmann, find striking images to tell the story of the radical cutting of the cord of their antihero Diane, who flees from her newborn baby and purported domestic bliss to an unknown city in the Mediterranean.

With I Saw the TV Glow, Jane Schoenbrun delivers one of the most idiosyncratic and fascinating works of the year, effortlessly crossing boundaries of genre, gender and trauma in this eye- and soul-opening trip. Jérémy Clapin also ventures into other spheres with Pendant ce temps sur Terre (Meanwhile on Earth) as he confronts his main character with dilemmas of more than just an earthly kind as she searches for her missing brother.

A defiant generation of fathers, mothers and aunts are the focus of Aslı Özge’s Faruk, Santiago Lozano Álvarez’s Yo vi tres luces negras (I Saw Three Black Lights), Marcelo Botta’s Betânia and Ray Yeung’s All Shall Be Well. Aslı Özge places her over-90-year-old father at the centre of her elegant and playful hybrid work as we accompany him through a rapidly changing Istanbul and discover what it means to make a film. In his protagonist Angie, Ray Yeung creates a quiet but impressively resilient heroine who, following the death of her long-term partner Pat, defends her right to property and to having a say.

For the 26th time, the Panorama Audience Award will be presented in cooperation with radioeins and rbb television on Berlinale Publikumstag, February 25 at the Zoo Palast. Another highly coveted prize is also entering its best years: on February 23, the TEDDY AWARD will be presented for the 38th time at the Volksbühne.

The full programme will be announced in mid-January.

The first eleven films of the 2024 Panorama

Press Office
December 14, 2023