twenty years ago, Terrence Malick picked up the golden Bear for The red Line . In the past year, Wes Anderson returned to Berlin with the silver Bear of the stage, with Island dog . This year, the Berlinale does not have any american filmmaker in the competition. Necessarily, there is nothing against the actors macedonians or mongols, but a red carpet without hollywood stars is least bright. To find the Yankees, you could go Monday to the front-German premiere of Vice, signed Adam McKay, presented out of competition. Or, more likely, he had to venture out this weekend on the side of the Panorama, the selection parallel. Two players have submitted their first feature films of fiction as filmmakers. The depressive Casey Affleck and comedian Jonah Hill.

” READ ALSO – The French Dispatch : Kate Winslet in turn joins the cast of the next Wes Anderson

Affleck has had the dedication in 2017 with the splendid Manchester by the sea (Golden Globe and Oscar for best actor). This was prior to the case of Weinstein and being caught by an old story. To make it short, the producer of ” I’m Still Here , his fake documentary on the fake retirement of his friend Joaquin Phoenix, was accused of having fired because she had refused to sleep with him. A financial arrangement has made everyone agree, but Affleck is now a pariah in Hollywood.

” READ ALSO – Casey Affleck made his mea culpa after eight years of prosecution for sexual harassment

” I hope the public will keep an open mind and will remain measured. And that people can freely express their opinion on the film. “

Cassey Affleck

At the Berlinale film festival, feminist festival (seven women directors in competition this year with Juliette Binoche as president), he looked so unhappy that the journalists were not too tortured on the topic during the press conference. Like his film, Light of my life , imagine a post-apocalyptic world where a mysterious evil would have eliminated women from the surface of the Earth, he still found talking about her pots and pans.

” READ ALSO – A Berlinale feminine, feminist, and French

“I’m not an expert in feminist film, he explained. I wrote the script before that this case does not come up in conversation. This is no longer the case today and so much the better. The subject of the film had me truly at heart, and this is not an answer to the case. I don’t know what people will think of the film. I hope that the public will keep an open mind and will remain measured. And that people can freely express their opinion on the film.”

In this world without women, are only men violent, misogyny uninhibited.

And Light of my life merit, because Affleck shows a real talent as a director. The beginning is relatively steep. In a tent in the middle of the woods, a father tells a story to his daughter (a free version of Noah’s Ark). The scene takes a quarter of an hour. Then, the two characters are walking and the film reveals little by little the reasons of their wandering in a winter landscape and hostile.

An epidemic has decimated the women, carriers of a deadly virus. Only a handful of survivors are herded into a bunker. In this world without women, are only men violent, misogyny uninhibited. The reason for which the father passes his daughter’s hair short for a boy. They pass through forests, find shelter in an abandoned house, are never quiet for very long.

The actor Affleck plays very well the father sorry, protective and worried. A few flashbacks show the mother (Elisabeth Moss) is ready to leave the world, and to entrust his daughter. The director Affleck, without dramatic effects, tension. The suspense culminates in a house where three men greet them. We think of The road , Leave no trace or Without a sound , but the film traces its own path and, while keeping a line of minimalist, ends up being upsetting.

The nostalgia of Jonah Hill in the 90’s

It was believed that they were going to relax with Jonah Hill, a comic actor in overweight discovered in the productions of Judd Apatow ( blister, mode d’emploi , SuperGrave , Without Sarah nothing go , Funny people ) and recognized as an excellent actor with Strategist of Bennett Miller, and The Wolf of Wall Street of Martin Scorsese. It had been all wrong. the 90’s has nothing to do with a good laugh.

” READ ALSO – Jonah Hill he lost all sense of humor?

Jonah Hill signs a very personal film, a nostalgic and melancholic. It tells the story of Stevie (Sunny Suljic), 13 years old, and already doubts as to the existence of happiness. It must be said that a mother to pick it up and a big brother to a brutal and unfortunate do not help to breathe the joy of living.

It is in the Los Angeles of the 1990s. Stevie will be included in a band of skaters, of which it became the mascot. They have nicknames not possible ( “Fuckshit” for one, “putainmerde”). This are kids, not spoiled by the life that kill the time on their boards. Alcohol and girls are also central to the concerns of his boys. Hill manages to make them endearing. He remembers his youth without embellishing or blackening. This is his 400 blows.