Film4 at Berlin International Film Festival

15 January 2015

 

Two Film4 films have been selected to screen at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival. Both films feature in the competition programme.

From the director of Weekend, writer-director Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years stars Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay as a couple whose seemingly contented lives are thrown into question when a letter from a past lover arrives in the post.

Anton Corbijn’s Life stars Dane DeHaan as James Dean and Robert Pattinson as Dennis Stock, the Magnum photographer commissioned to photograph the actor for LIFE Magazine in 1955.

Both films will receive their World Premieres at the festival.

The festival runs from 5th February to 14th February.

’71 and 20,000 Days on Earth, who featured in the 2014 festival, have both since received British Independent Film Awards and BAFTA nominations amongst a number of other accolades.

45 Years Dir. Andrew Haigh
The film follows Kate Mercer (Rampling) in the five days leading up to her forty-fifth wedding anniversary. Party plans are going well, until a letter arrives for her husband (Courtenay) informing him that the body of his first love has been found frozen in the icy glaciers of the Swiss Alps. As their anniversary celebrations grow closer, they delve further into their past, leaving their future in question.

Life Dir. Anton Corbijn
Life is inspired by the true story of a friendship that developed between Magnum photographer Dennis Stock (Pattinson) and actor James Dean (DeHaan) when Stock was commissioned to photograph the actor for LIFE magazine in 1955. Stock was 26 and old before his time, when into his buttoned-down world came fledgling star James Dean, a free spirit who would change popular culture from suits to jeans and from matinee idols to teenage heartthrobs. The assignment, which took the pair on a photographic journey across the US, from LA to New York and on to Indiana would change Stock’s life and provide the world with some of the most iconic images of the age.