TOPS: An Education (Lone Scherfig) After Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself, the Danish director shows once more that there’s a future after Dogma, be it in an English-language mass-appeal coming-of-age drama. Witty, endearing, and Carey Mulligan’s first leading role. Opened Feb 18
Carlos (Olivier Assayas ) Not only the best-researched biographical work – on film or in print – about the world’s first star terrorist, but also a fascinating thriller which keeps you on the edge of your seat all 300 minutes. Opened Nov 4
Mammuth (Gustave de Kervern, Benoît Delépine) Dépardieu in a role that was written for him. Part road movie, part retirement farce, part satire, and part absurd fun. Opened Sep 16
Neukölln Unlimited (Agostino Imondi, Dietmar Ratsch) Trials and tribulations of an immigrant family (part legal, part illegal) of street artists in Berlin. An entertaining, exciting perspective on the tiresome integration debate. Opened Apr 8
Splice (Vincenzo Natali) Gene-splicing thriller with Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley that cuts deep into the moral and ethical issues connected with test-tube life. Opened June 3
Moon (Duncan Jones) Low budget at its best in this one-man (Sam Rockwell) sci-fi psychological thriller about a man on the moon who’s being utterly exploited by the powers that be. Opened July 15
Space Tourists (Christian Frei) Intricately fashioned documentary about Russian space exploitation, recycling, developing world ingenuity and global entanglements. Opened July 29
Map of the Sounds of Tokyo (Isabel Coixet) So intimate that it’s at times almost painful, but if you want to know something about human communication, Coixet has it figured out. Opened Aug 15
Winter’s Bone (Debra Granik) A girl on the edge of economic despair, desperately keeping her family together. Tight, heartfelt, in love with its characters, and an original EXBERLINER discovery at this year’s Berlinale. Premiered at Berlinale, opens in March 2011
Wild Grass (Alain Resnais) At almost 90, Resnais is a filmmaker who hasn’t reached the limit of his creativity. As the plot spirals onwards, to culminate in a small vintage plane pirouetting out of control in an early spring sky, we’re on cloud nine. Opened Apr 22
FLOPS: The Road (John Hillcoat) Dumbing down has reached new lows. No matter how often Cormack MacCarthy says he liked the film, it picks up its audience at the lowest common denominator and – even worse – leaves it there. Opened Oct 7
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (Rebecca Miller) Another case of “never trust the teller, trust the tale”: Book-to-film by author herself, and unbearably simple-minded. Opened July 1
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (David Yates) This is the seventh film and we only get part one? The second part will be divided into four quarters, the second of which might or might not be in 3D and they’re planning an eighth film in smell-ovision. Opened Nov 18
All films premiered in Germany in 2010
*Be sure to check our other sections for the ‘best of’ just about everything else EXBERLINER covered this year