From Marlene-Dietrich-Platz and the Zoo Palast the Focus of the day

(from the #Berlinale Luigi Noera with the extraordinary participation of Carla Cucchiarelli and the kind collaboration of Marina Pavido, and Eleonora Ono of the editorial staff Ground floor – Photos are published courtesy of #BERLINALE)

At Panorama authorial evidence between the diversity of European and African cultures on the one hand and the economic difficulties of emigrants on the other

PANORAMA

Enjoy Your Stay di Dominik Locher, Honeylyn Joy Alipio | with Mercedes Cabral, Alexis Manenti, Anna Luna, Hasmine Killip – Switzerland/ F / Philippines 2026 | WP

The plot: To avoid losing custody of her six-year-old daughter in Manila, Luz, an undocumented Filipina cleaner who works in a luxury Swiss ski resort, must earn money at all costs, even if it means transgressing one's moral limits.

Review: the incipit shows a scene of illegal trafficking of illegal immigrants in a game of easy money.! But it will be true? The reality is that they take your passport and a debt materializes.

Among the snowy landscapes of Verbier, the director constructs a clear visual and moral contrast: the glittering luxury of the chalets and the invisibility of those who make them habitable. Luz, Filipino migrant without documents, lives and works in this gap. The Switzerland that the film shows is not the one you see on a postcard, but an impeccable system that also works thanks to those who remain in the shadows.

The direction insists on this dichotomy: large spaces, stained glass windows, Alpine panoramas on one side; cramped service rooms and temporary accommodation on the other. Luz and the other women - including her friend Aileen - move in silence, aware that every noise can mean control, expulsion, end of everything. Thibault, the employer, embodies smiling exploitation, formally courteous but structurally ruthless. He doesn't need to raise his voice: the precariousness of female workers speaks for him.

The most original element comes with the Philippine reality show. The media outburst, in which Luz's ex-husband exposes his daughter Sofia in front of the cameras asking for sole custody, shifts the conflict to a transnational level. Motherhood becomes spectacle, public pressure, emotional blackmail. Luz promises to return for the little girl's birthday, but the promise clashes with the brutal mathematics of debt.

This is where the film gets tighter. The race against time forces Luz to look for extra money, undermining solidarity between women and undermining the fragile balance of the migrant community. The moral choice is never abstract: it is concrete, urgent, painful. Betray or lose your daughter. Stay loyal or survive.

But the film's strength lies elsewhere: in the constant tension between maternal responsibility and economic survival, between immaculate snow and invisible work.

Enjoy Your Stay è ua tense and politically aware work, which shows how contemporary migration is not just geographical displacement, but continuous negotiation between love, money and dignity.

Paradise at Jeremy Comte | con Joey Boivin Desmeules, Daniel Atsu Huckport, Evelyne de la Chenelière – Canada / F / Ghana 2026| WP | first work

The plot: The enigmatic captain of a burning cargo ship links the destinies of two families: one in the bustling Ghanaian city of Accra, the other in a quiet Canadian town.

Review: the incipit with a voice in the background prepares for a tragedy at sea!

Between the coasts of Ghana and the snowy suburbs of Quebec, Paradise constructs a double story that is mirrored at a distance. Two teenagers, Kojo e Tony, separated by an ocean but united by an absence: the paternal one. The film weaves together their trajectories without forcing artificial connections, leaving the theme of lack to act as an invisible bridge.

Ad Accra, Kojo is torn between the anarchic vitality of the street and the moral legacy of his fisherman father. The storm that swallows him is not just a narrative event, but a symbolic fracture: with the passing of his father, the sea ceases to be promised and becomes empty. Kojo's entry into the world of gangs is told without spectacularization. His rise is rapid, almost mechanical, but the film insists on the gap between external power and internal aridity. Success does not replace lost orientation.

In Quebec, Tony experiences a different but parallel anxiety. Rebellious and vulnerable, he observes his mother Chantal with a mixture of suspicion and need. The discovery of her long-distance relationship with a merchant ship captain opens a window of opportunity: what if that man was the absent father? Here the film works on the register of waiting, of the held gaze, of the hope that does not dare to declare itself.

The direction alternates the two landscapes with visual sensitivity: the dusty heat of Accra against the cold, rarefied light of North America. It's not just a geographic contrast, but emotional. Both boys are looking for a figure who anchors them to the world; both must deal with the idea that fatherhood may be more myth than presence.

The sincerity of the interpreters and the delicacy of the gaze avoid rhetoric.

Paradise is a story of distance and emotional lack: tells how absence can shape identities and desires, and how, even thousands of kilometers away, the need for identity has the same silent rhythm.

luigi Noera