Opening your film with a quote from Marcel Proust is certainly a choice, and “This Is Not Berlin” does its best to back the bold move. In his fourth narrative feature, Mexican filmmaker Hari Sama paints a vivid, if dizzying, portrait of his hometown, Mexico City circa 1986: There’s a steady stream of music, art, and literary references; broadly painted caricatures of youth searching for identity; hypnotic montages of political performance art; and full-frontal male nudity.
Using the underground avant-garde art scene as its backdrop and a wayward teenage boy as its protagonist, “This Is Not Berlin” renders the follies of youth through a kaleidoscopic phantasma of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll. Despite all the compelling decoration, however, there are few surprises.
The story follows Carlos (Xabiani Ponce De León), a fatherless teen who watches his little brother as his mother (“Roma” star Marina de Tavira) stays in bed hungover all day.
Using the underground avant-garde art scene as its backdrop and a wayward teenage boy as its protagonist, “This Is Not Berlin” renders the follies of youth through a kaleidoscopic phantasma of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll. Despite all the compelling decoration, however, there are few surprises.
The story follows Carlos (Xabiani Ponce De León), a fatherless teen who watches his little brother as his mother (“Roma” star Marina de Tavira) stays in bed hungover all day.
- 8/10/2019
- by Jude Dry
- Indiewire
Hari Sama’s “This Is Not Berlin” is a memory movie set in the art world and punk scene of Mexico City circa 1986, a world that is packed with visual detail and moments that are trapped in time by the camera.
The film moves very fast and takes in as much of this world as possible for us, offering it up both lovingly and satirically. There are many characters, but somehow what stands out are shots of Tabasco sauce poured on eggs, a cartoon program playing on a television set and smoke drifting in the air from cigarettes.
In one charged and lyrical scene here, best friends Carlos (Xabiani Ponce de León) and Gera (José Antonio Toledano) are seen from above smoking cigarettes together, with a paper cup framed in back of them so that we can see the cigarette butts that have been discarded. Their faces are open to the pleasure of the moment,...
The film moves very fast and takes in as much of this world as possible for us, offering it up both lovingly and satirically. There are many characters, but somehow what stands out are shots of Tabasco sauce poured on eggs, a cartoon program playing on a television set and smoke drifting in the air from cigarettes.
In one charged and lyrical scene here, best friends Carlos (Xabiani Ponce de León) and Gera (José Antonio Toledano) are seen from above smoking cigarettes together, with a paper cup framed in back of them so that we can see the cigarette butts that have been discarded. Their faces are open to the pleasure of the moment,...
- 8/8/2019
- by Dan Callahan
- The Wrap
In the midst of Roma mania last awards season, a little film emerged at the Sundance Film Festival, also starring Marina de Tavira as a stalwart single mother: Hari Sama’s This Is Not Berlin. Led by newcomers Xabiani Ponce de León and José Antonio Toledano as Carlos and Gera, they play two high schoolers growing up in Mexico City. Bored with his high school’s machismo soccer culture, Carlos joins the small but radical queer and leftist community, participating in public displays of nudity to protest FIFA officials. Gera wants to join but his personality doesn’t click with the group, so the boys grow apart as they stumble through class exploration and settling on their identities. The surprising fate of Sama’s characters makes the viewer reconsider everything they’ve seen. What seems like a natural telos for Carlos and Gera is worth closer examination.
We sat down...
We sat down...
- 7/22/2019
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
"I'm more of a spiritual guide." Samuel Goldwyn Films has debuted an official trailer for an indie film from Mexico titled This Is Not Berlin, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. It also won a number of major awards, including a Special Jury Award and Best Cinematography, at the Málaga Spanish Film Festival this year. From Mexican filmmaker Hari Sama, This Is Not Berlin is described as a "thrilling and sexy clash of art, drugs, and punk music". Seventeen-year-old Carlos doesn't fit in anywhere, not in his family nor with the friends he has chosen in school. But everything changes when he is invited to a mythical nightclub where he discovers the underground nightlife scene: punk, sexual liberty and drugs. This stars Xabiani Ponce de León, José Antonio Toledano, Mauro Sanchez Navarro, Klaudia Garcia, Ximena Romo, Américo Hollander, and Marina de Tavira (seen in Roma). Looks vibrant & sincere.
- 6/21/2019
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
Announced at the Cannes Film Market, L.A.’s Samuel Goldwyn Films acquired the North America rights to Hari Sama’s semi-autobiographical “This is Not Berlin.”
The deal was negotiated between Samuel Goldwyn Films’ Meg Longo, and Jason Ishikawa and Shane Riley from Cinetic Media on behalf of Madrid’s Latido films, which handles international sales.
Sama co-wrote the film with Rodrigo Ordóñez and Max Zunino, and co-produced with Ale García, Antonio Urdapilleta and Verónica Valadez P.
Having participated at a number of Latin American works in progress events, the film premiered to critical praise in Sundance, where Variety’s Dennis Harvey acknowledged it as “something special.”
Set in the politically contentious Mexico City of 1986, the film follows 17-year-old Carlos through a year of turmoil as he distances himself from his mother and childhood friends whose interests no longer align with his own.
Using his punk front-woman sister and acumen for fixing electronic equipment,...
The deal was negotiated between Samuel Goldwyn Films’ Meg Longo, and Jason Ishikawa and Shane Riley from Cinetic Media on behalf of Madrid’s Latido films, which handles international sales.
Sama co-wrote the film with Rodrigo Ordóñez and Max Zunino, and co-produced with Ale García, Antonio Urdapilleta and Verónica Valadez P.
Having participated at a number of Latin American works in progress events, the film premiered to critical praise in Sundance, where Variety’s Dennis Harvey acknowledged it as “something special.”
Set in the politically contentious Mexico City of 1986, the film follows 17-year-old Carlos through a year of turmoil as he distances himself from his mother and childhood friends whose interests no longer align with his own.
Using his punk front-woman sister and acumen for fixing electronic equipment,...
- 5/18/2019
- by Jamie Lang
- Variety Film + TV
Buyers respond to 4x4, The Weasels’ Tale, Bunuel In The Labyrinth Of The Turtles.
Madrid-based powerhouse Latido Films has struck a raft of key deals on its prestige Efm slate, led by further business on Argentine-Spain duo 4x4 and Oscar winner Juan Jose Campanella’s The Weasels’ Tale.
Mariano Cohn’s thriller 4x4 (Argentina-Spain) was the talk of Ventana Sur in Buenos Aires in December and stars Juan Pedro Lanzani from Argentine smash The Clan as a petty crook who breaks into a car, only to discover he has been lured into a trap.
Latido has licensed rights to...
Madrid-based powerhouse Latido Films has struck a raft of key deals on its prestige Efm slate, led by further business on Argentine-Spain duo 4x4 and Oscar winner Juan Jose Campanella’s The Weasels’ Tale.
Mariano Cohn’s thriller 4x4 (Argentina-Spain) was the talk of Ventana Sur in Buenos Aires in December and stars Juan Pedro Lanzani from Argentine smash The Clan as a petty crook who breaks into a car, only to discover he has been lured into a trap.
Latido has licensed rights to...
- 2/13/2019
- by Jeremy Kay
- ScreenDaily
It opens in slow motion with teenage bodies wrestling and punching inside chaotic dust swirls, one boy (Xabiani Ponce de León’s Carlos) caught isolated in the middle of the frame. He’s not looking to hit any of the others. In fact he’s barely dodging out of the way when they come too close. It’s almost as though Carlos isn’t even there, his mind and body separated as two halves of the same conflicted whole. He knows he should be present with his friends to show his machismo and do Mexico proud like the soccer team soon to hit the 1986 World Cup pitch, but something is calling him in the distance that he can’t quite see. It’s punk metal versus new wave blues, hetero-normative conformity versus queer counter-culture.
Director Hari Sama’s opening scene to This Is Not Berlin is the perfect prologue for its rebellious themes.
Director Hari Sama’s opening scene to This Is Not Berlin is the perfect prologue for its rebellious themes.
- 1/30/2019
- by Jared Mobarak
- The Film Stage
Writer-director Hari Sama’s fifth feature, “This is Not Berlin,” is set to world premiere at this month’s Sundance Film Festival. New York-based Cinema Tropical, a leading presenter of Latin American cinema in the U.S., has granted Variety exclusive access to the first trailer for the coming-of-age drama set in 1986 Mexico City.
Sama wrote, directed and his company Catatonia produced the semi-autobiographical feature, which impressed in works in progress sections at Impulso Morelia in October – where it scooped the Cinepolis Distribución Award and a special mention from the Jury – and Ventana Sur’s Copia Final in December.
The film boasts an ensemble cast led by two newcomers Xabiani Ponce de León and José Antonio Toledano, along with “Roma” star Marina de Tavira and popular Mexican TV actress Ximena Romo. Sama himself makes an appearance as well.
In the trailer, we see the drug and art-fueled world of political...
Sama wrote, directed and his company Catatonia produced the semi-autobiographical feature, which impressed in works in progress sections at Impulso Morelia in October – where it scooped the Cinepolis Distribución Award and a special mention from the Jury – and Ventana Sur’s Copia Final in December.
The film boasts an ensemble cast led by two newcomers Xabiani Ponce de León and José Antonio Toledano, along with “Roma” star Marina de Tavira and popular Mexican TV actress Ximena Romo. Sama himself makes an appearance as well.
In the trailer, we see the drug and art-fueled world of political...
- 1/21/2019
- by Jamie Lang
- Variety Film + TV
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