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The Berlin International Film Festival, also known as the Berlinale, is one of the world's largest and most prestigious film festivals. It has gained a reputation for being the most political of the leading film festivals owing to its origins as a divided city on the front lines of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West.

While recently promoting his latest movie, the screenlife thriller Missing, Ken Leung shared how, when he was cast in his first major film, the 1998 blockbuster Rush Hour, he told its director Brett Ratner that he wanted to treat the part as if he’ll never be in a film again.   The 53-year-old actor meant it as a reminder to himself.

While there remains much progress still yet to be made, younger generations of today can often get a sense of just how much the world has changed just by looking back at movies from 20, 40, 60, 80, and 100 years or more ago. For people of all ethnicities, but especially persons of color, what they generally see — and don’t see — can be both instructive and heartbreaking.

  As we continue exploring Black History Month, HFPA member Kimberly Reyes recently sat down on zoom with two influential filmmakers who have unique credentials to address both where we stand and where we should be headed in entertaining and educating audiences to better understand history. Also in perfect timing for the milestone month, producer Chris L Jenkins and director Brandon Kramer are promoting their own documentary film, The First Step, which followed media personality and civil rights activist Van Jones as he attempted to build bridges during the Trump era and bring people together from both political parties to pass a landmark criminal justice bill on prison reform, The First Step bill.

Malene Choi, a South Korean filmmaker, has only been to Berlin once but it is her second visit to the German capital that promises to be the most memorable. It is here at the 2023 edition of the Berlin Film Festival her film Stille Liv (The Quiet Migration) will premier.

Tia Kouvo is a Finnish director and screenwriter based in Gothenburg, Sweden. Her directorial feature, Family Time, follows an annual family Christmas get-together that sees the usual tensions rise when family members try to find connection, but aren’t always successful.

In 1923, a gangster and bootlegger called Owney “The Killer” Madden got out of Sing Sing jail and bought out heavyweight boxer Jack Johnson’s supper club, the Club De Luxe, on the corner of 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue, in Harlem. He renamed it the Cotton Club.

Having famous parents could either be a blessing or a curse to children who want to follow their parents’ paths. They are either compared to their popular parents or they are pressured to live up to the expectations of the public that they are as good as their elders.

If you loved Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio there’s currently a special exhibition Guillermo del Toro: Crafting Pinocchio devoted to the process behind the Golden Globe-winning stop-motion animation film is now on view at The Museum of Modern Art in New York (open through April 15, 2023). This insightful exhibition offers a behind-the-scenes look at the handcrafted creative process to deeper comprehend del Toro’s first stop-motion animation film.

“Most people only live once. But I’ve lived 141 lives,” said Claude Joséphine Rose Cardinale in 2014.