The Berlinale’s avant-garde sidebar includes new documentaries from James Benning and Luke Fowler, and new features from Piotr Pawlus and Tomasz Wolski, Susana Nobre, and Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche.
![Film still of 'The Bride'](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/The-Bride-Bora-Shingiro-H-2023.jpg?w=1296&h=730&crop=1)
Highlights include Allensworth, a new documentary from acclaimed U.S. filmmaker James Benning (RR, 13 Lakes), which looks at the first self-administered African-American municipality in California;
The drama The Temple Woods Gang from director Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche (Story of Judas)
Being in a Place — A Portrait of Margaret Tait, a documentary by Luke Fowler on the Scottish poet and filmmaker.
![Gina Lollobrigida](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/gina_lollobrigida.jpg?w=1296)
Among the world premieres at the 53rd Berlinale Forum are In Ukraine, a non-fiction look at the ongoing Ukraine war from Polish directors Piotr Pawlus and Tomasz Wolski; the “coming-of-middle-age” tale Cidade Rabat from Portugese filmmaker Susana Nobre (Jack’s Ride); the Argentine comedy of errors About Thirty from director Martin Shanly (About 12); and The Bride, a debut feature from director Myriam U. Birara, which is set in Rwanda three years after the 1994 genocide.
The Forum Special program, previously announced, includes Dick Fontaine’s newly restored 1982 documentary I Heard It Through the Grapevine, which follows James Baldwin as he retraces his time in the South during the Civil Rights Movement;
Antonio Carlos da Fontoura’s 1974 feature The Devil Queen, a Brazilian queer drama made during the country’s military dictatorship, and starring Milton Gonçalves, one of the country’s most famous Black actors, who died last year.
The 2023 Berlinale runs Feb. 16-26.