After competing for the Golden Bear back in 2018 with The Heiress (read review), Paraguayan filmmaker Marcelo Martinessi returns to the Berlinale with the birth of authoritarianism and how one artist was snuffed out during the brutal dictatorship circa 1959. Narciso (originally titled “Who Killed Narciso?) is a meditation on how desire, fear, and collective faith intertwine to produce authoritarian power—exploring repression not only as a political system, but as an intimate condition embedded in bodies, institutions, and inherited memory. As per our exclusive clip below, there is no greater threat to conformity than what the sounds of rock & roll brought along.… Read the rest
Given its title, 
“The Zone wants to be respected. Otherwise it will punish.” Aleksandr Kayadonvsky’s line from Tarkovsky’s existential sci-fi classic Stalker (1979) comes to mind when viewing Sirat, the fourth and arguably most accessible feature from French-Spanish director Óliver Laxe, who once again returns to the metaphorical glories of a spiritual odyssey as previously explored in 2016’s Mimosas. But his latest is a pulsating, techno drenched mixture of mythological soul searching and contemporary intentional drug use all catalyzed by the search of a missing young woman. Layered, almost kaleidoscopic metaphors evolve through religious and politically minded themes, and the end result feels like a Gaspar Noe adaptation of 
