01/02/2019 - The sales agent’s Berlinale line-up boasts three Golden Bear contenders, a Panorama film, a Special Gala screening and one Forum title

With three titles set to be showcased in the race for the Golden Bear and several others being presented in various other sections of the festival, the European Film Market of the 69th Berlin Film Festival (7-17 February) looks set to be extremely fruitful for German international sales agent The Match Factory.

Gleaming on the firm’s line-up is Fatih Akin’s main competition entry The Golden Glove [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Fatih Akin
interview: Jonas Dassler
film profile]. The director, whose Head-On [+see also:
trailer
film profile] won the Golden Bear in 2004, is returning to the Berlinale with a film that depicts the true story of Fritz "Fiete" Honk, a serial killer who murdered four women in Hamburg’s red-light district in the 1970s.

The Match Factory is also handling world sales for the main competition entry A Tale of Three Sisters [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Emin Alper
interview: Emin Alper
film profile] by Emin Alper. The Turkish director’s third feature follows the story of Reyhan, Nurhan and Havva, who reunite in the modest house of their biological father after having been raised by foster families in the city. Finding themselves in a remote mountain village, they all yearn to return to the city as soon as possible.

Another Golden Bear contender that the company will be negotiating deals for is So Long, My Son by Wang Xiaoshuai. The Chinese director, whose Beijing Bicycle won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2001 Berlinale, returns to the festival with a movie that traces the lives of two parents who part ways after the loss of their child, over three decades of social and political upheaval. 

Furthermore, The Match Factory is on board as sales agent for Ritesh Batra’s Photograph, which will be presented as a Special Gala screening at the Berlinale, following its world premiere at the ongoing Sundance Film Festival. Set in Mumbai, the film centres on a struggling street photographer who, pressured by his grandmother to get married, persuades a shy stranger to pose as his fiancée.

A further title that the Cologne-based company will be negotiating deals for is Flatland [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Jenna Cato Bass, which will celebrate its world premiere in this year’s Panorama section. After premiering High Fantasy in last year’s Generation 14plus, the South African director returns to the gathering with a film that follows the story of three different, but equally desperate, women. The movie questions what it means to be a woman in a hostile frontier land, but also in the world at large. 

At Berlin, The Match Factory will also be presenting Xaver Böhm’s O Beautiful Night [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Xaver Böhm
film profile], which is premiering in this year’s Panorama, and organising further market screenings for Rick Alverson’s The Mountain, Sherry Hormann’s A Regular Woman [+see also:
trailer
film profile], György Mór Kárpáti’s Guerilla [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] and Henrik Georgsson’s Stieg Larsson - The Man Who Played With Fire [+see also:
trailer
film profile].

Lastly, the sales agent will present Christian Petzold’s Transit [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Christian Petzold
interview: Franz Rogowski
film profile] and Sherry Hormann’s aforementioned A Regular Woman as part of the Lola@Berlinale screenings hosted by the German Film Academy.