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)

In the two main sections, a delicate film about the elderly, and an ironic film about Palestinians in Berlin.

Panorama presents us with the effects of the dictatorships in Latin America of the last century and the current one in Russia

PANORAMA

Narciso by Marcelo Martinessi | with Diro Romero, Manuel Cuenca, Mona Martinez, Nahuel Perez Biscayart – Paraguay / D / Uruguay / Brazil / Portugal / Spain / F 2026 | WP

The plot: Paraguay, 1958. The charismatic Narciso returns from Buenos Aires with rock 'n’ roll in the veins. Under the suffocating military regime, becomes a music star and a symbol of freedom. But then, after his last show, he is found dead…

Review: In the incipit the Rocker and roller Narcisio performs in front of his delirious audience who incites him – Yet, yet! – We are in Asunción del 1959, while Alfredo Stroessner's regime silently consolidates its power, rock 'n' roll erupts as a promise of modernity. The film works on this friction: rhythm versus discipline, body against norm, visibility against censorship.

The first part vibrates with energy. Music is not just a soundtrack, but a narrative force that disrupts spaces and hierarchies. Narciso, charismatic musician, embodies this fracture: young, sensual, night. His body becomes a political manifesto without ever declaring itself as such. This is where the film hits home most accurately, showing how the desire, when it goes public, you automatically become a threat.

Then the pace changes. The staging tightens, spaces close, the words “virtue” and “decency” take on an almost physical weight. Repression does not explode: si sedimenta. It's a slow process, credible, disturbing precisely because it is gradual. Morality becomes a more effective control tool than explicit violence.

however, in its symbolic construction, the work tends to simplify: Narcissus is sometimes more emblem than individual. The allegorical dimension prevails over psychological complexity, and this reduces the emotional impact of some narrative turns.

It remains a compact film, politically lucid, capable of translating a historical passage into sensorial tension. Between dance and surveillance, tells the exact moment a generation understands that the future is not forbidden — it is controlled.

Panorama documents

A Russian winter (A Russian Winter) by Patric Chiha – F 2026 | WP

The plot: After the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Margarita, Yuri and their friends are forced into exile from Russia because they refuse to submit to the regime. Suspended between one country and another, they have nowhere to return and don't really feel welcome.

Review: the war in Ukraine seen by young Russians who fled conscription and the repression of Putin's dictatorial regime. The doc introduces us to two young artists who, after much wandering between Türkiye and Belarus and countries where it was possible to go to escape the war when it was still possible, they finally reunite in France which, due to its sense of identity, has always been an elective land for cultural affinities since Tsarist Russia. But now they have a new tsar who would like to reconstitute “Great Russia”.

In reality, both America and Russia dream of a great return to the past, causing humanitarian disasters before everyone's eyes.

For these special "refugees", it is still a diaspora that sees them far from their homeland, but unhappy in the land that welcomes them, perhaps with some bad mood.

In fact, in the aftermath of the large-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 by Russia, the film chooses to focus not on the front, but on the internal fracture of those who remain outside the heroic or patriotic narrative. Margarita, Yuri and their group of friends do not carry weapons: they flee. And it is precisely this escape that becomes the political heart of the work.

The choice that haunts them — military service, prison or exile — is not presented as a dramatic crossroads in the traditional sense, but as a slow emptying of possibilities. The direction with a sober staging reflects the emotional state of the protagonists: suspended, bewildered, without coordinates.

The film is striking for its ability to describe exile not as liberation, but as a new form of precariousness. All’estero, the characters do not find unconditional acceptance or a clear political identity. They are Russians who reject the regime, but they remain marked by the language, by culture and stigma. This ambiguity is one of the most successful aspects: the work does not seek easy acquittals nor indulge in victimization.

On a narrative level, But, the choice of a constantly modest tone risks flattening the conflict at times. The fragmentary nature of the migratory experience is conveyed with honesty, but sometimes at the expense of dramatic tension. What remains is a lucid and melancholic generational portrait: young people forced to redefine themselves in a space they don't feel right, bearers of a guilt that they do not recognize as such but which accompanies them everywhere. A work that talks about war without showing it, and which finds its most powerful image in emotional dislocation.

luigi Noera