The 67th Berlin International Film Festival will open on February 9 with a world premiere: Etienne Comar’s directorial debut, Django, about legendary jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt.
Comar's film will screen in competition, joining titles by Aki Kaurismäki, Agnieszka Holland, Sally Potter, Sebastián Lelio, Alain Gomis, Oren Moverman, Teresa Villaverde, Andres Veiel, Calin Peter Netzer and Ildiko Enyedi. All but one of the previously-announced competition entries - roughly half of the full lineup - are world premieres, an encouraging sign for a festival that has an annoying habit of filling the main slate with international premieres of Hollywood fare, as was the case with last year's festival opener, Hail Caeser! by the Coen Brothers (whose True Grit had previously opened the 2011 Berlinale, also as an international premiere).
Django will be the first musical biopic to open Europe's largest film festival since Olivier Dahan's La Vie en Rose, in 2007. Like at Cannes and Venice, opening night in Berlin is usually a flashy yet forgettable affair. The 2008 Berlinale was less remarkable for Martin Scorsese's rockumentary Shine a Light than the fact that the director brought the entire band with him, temporarily making this insistently unglamorous festival briefly seem like a posh, red-carpet event. (The press conference and photo call also showed how easily thousands of journalists can transform into a gaggle of screaming teenage girls). Aside from the Coen Brothers, other opening night fare has included ghastly pseudo art house fluff (Tom Tykwer's The International, Wong Kar-wai's The Grandmaster) and middling high-brow flicks like Benoît Jacquot's (Farewell, My Queen, Isabel Coixet's Nobody Wants the Night and Wang Quan'an's Apart Together). By far the most rousing opener in recent memory was the triumphant world premiere of Wes Anderson's Grand Budapest Hotel in 2014, when it won the Grand Jury Prize.
According to the Berlinale website, Django focuses on the guitarist's flight from Nazi-occupied Paris in 1943. Director Comar is a prolific screenwriter and producer whose credits include the acclaimed films Of Gods and Men and Timbuktu, but Django marks his first time in the director's chair.
“Django Reinhardt was one of the most brilliant pioneers of European jazz and the father of Gypsy Swing," said Berlinale Director Dieter Kosslick is yesterday's announcement."Django grippingly portrays one chapter in the musician’s eventful life and is a poignant tale of survival. Constant danger, flight and the atrocities committed against his family could not make him stop playing.”
The film stars Reda Kateb in the title role. Joining him are Cécile de France, Alex Brendemühl and Ulrich Brandhoff. The soundtrack features the Dutch jazz band Rosenberg Trio performing Django's famous music.