‘Small Things Like These’, More

The Berlin Film Festival kicks off its 74th edition Thursday with the opening-night world premiere screening of Small Things Like These, the Irish drama starring Oscar-nominated Oppenheimer star Cillian Murphy. It kicks of 10 days of movie debuts including for ones starring Rooney Mara, Isabelle Huppert, Gael García Bernal, Kristen Stewart and more.

This year’s Competition lineup features films from a swath of international filmmakers including Olivier Assayas, Mati Diop, Hong Sangsoo, Bruno Dumont and Abderrahmane Sissako.

The Berlinale runs through February 25.

Keep checking back below as Deadline reviews the best and buzziest movies of the festival. Click on the titles to read the full reviews.

Cuckoo

Section: Berlinale Special Gala
Director: Tilman Singer
Cast: Hunter Schafer, Dan Stevens, Jessica Henwick, Marton Csókás, Mila Lieu
Deadline’s takeaway: None of this is quite coherent. It might just be nonsense. Well, it is. But there is a cheerfully willing audience for this kind of film, and it no doubt will sell a lot of popcorn.

La Cocina

Section: Competition
Director: Alonso Ruizpalacios
Cast: Raul Briones, Rooney Mara, Anna Diaz, Motell Foster, Oded Fehr, Eduardo Olmos, Laura Gomez
Deadline’s takeaway: La Cocina is like The Bear on steroids, a black-and-white pressure cooker that builds to a fierce and explosive finale. It’s an unforgettable and gripping look inside not just a restaurant kitchen but the complicated lives of the invisible people who provide its heartbeat

Small Things Like These

Section: Competition
Director: Tim Mielants
Cast: Cillian Murphy, Eileen Walsh, Michelle Fairley, Emily Watson, Clare Dunne
Deadline’s takeaway: What a vivid story this might have been if, rather than sticking to the letter of Claire Keegan’s unadorned prose, the filmmakers had embraced and taken a leap of faith into the story’s subtextual horror.