Berlin film festival: Shahrbanoo Sadat is a charming presence in front of the camera and a skilled film-maker behind in this shrewd and contemporary tale

The Afghan film-maker Shahrbanoo Sadat is a warm and approachable presence as writer, director and star of No Good Men – a tale of Afghanistan’s women in 2021 as they are about to be surrendered to the Taliban with the withdrawal of US troops.

It’s an urgent tale, which incidentally closes with a fervent finale reminiscent of Casablanca – although the central turnaround in the male lead’s heart, gallantly disproving the title, is maybe a bit smooth.

No Good Men is screening at the Berlin film festival and will be released at a later date

Johnny Flynn and John C Reilly offer casting heft, but this moody, technically sound tale of an unfolding epidemic in 1870s Wisconsin lacks emotional substance

There is some very concerted image-making and mood-making in this technically accomplished yet unsatisfying drama from first-time, Norway-based director Dara Van Dusen. It is a sombre tale of the American old west, adapted by Dusen from the novel by Stewart O’Nan, and somehow has the feel of a short film indulgently taken to feature length. Its visual gestures and set pieces, although striking and often shocking, felt for me disconnected from any emotional truth – a truth that sustained, developed storytelling may have provided.

The setting is a frontier town in Wisconsin in 1870, and Jacob (Johnny Flynn) is both sheriff and pastor – although he wears neither badge nor religious garment. He has seen traumatising service in the civil war, in which he appears to have achieved high rank, although some in the town are suspicious of his Norwegian background. He is married to Marta (Kristine Kujath Thorp) and they have a young child.

Grant Gee’s film thoroughly inhabits the creative and personal torment experienced by the American pianist – with a terrific supporting Bill Pullman turn

This elusive, ruminative and very absorbing movie presents its successive scenes like a sequence of unresolved chords carrying the listener on a journey without a destination – and is, incidentally, one of those rare films featuring a wonderful supporting turn that does not undermine or upstage the rest. It’s a film about music. Particularly, about what remains when a musician cannot play and is left to consider the terrible sacrifices made, without conscious consent, to this all-consuming vocation that creates family pain and jealousy almost as a toxic byproduct. It’s a drama to put you in mind of Glenn Gould and Hilary du Pré, sister of Jacqueline.

Screenwriter Mark O’Halloran has adapted the 2013 novel Intermission by Owen Martell about renowned jazz pianist Bill Evans. It focuses on a period of emotional devastation for Evans, when no music was possible – perhaps a restorative intermission, perhaps the start of a calamitous new aridity – when his close friend and bassist Scott LaFaro was killed in a car crash in his 20s.

Berlin film festival
Bella Ramsey leads this likable coming-of-age story where the shared experience of adolescent cancer gives new warmth to a familiar genre

Bella Ramsey leads the cast of this likable coming-of-age movie from 26-year-old actor-turned-director George Jaques about a summer camp for teens with cancer. Though maybe sometimes a bit too euphoric in its positivity, and unrealistic about the life-changing experiences to be had at a camp like this or any other, it’s big-hearted, well acted, topped off with an amusing star cameo – and for those who think they can spot the “tragic-sacrificial” character in stories like this, writer-director Jaques executes a smart misdirection-twist.

There’s a kind of Heartstopper energy and a strongly LGBTQ+ cast but perhaps oddly, heterosexuality is dominant. It is as if the centrality of cancer has left no room for any additional “other” identities.

Amy Berg’s arresting documentary delves into the early life and untimely death of the 90s singer-songwriter, with extensive contributions from his mother and girlfriends

Some moths are drawn to the flame and some butterflies to the wheel. The exquisitely beautiful, mercurial and prodigiously talented 90s singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley was drawn to the music business. And this contractually demanded endless touring and a multi-album commitment when he’d already poured his twentysomething-year-old life and soul into the first one, Grace, a hipster-critical smash whose commercial underperformance in the US caused execs to push him ever harder for a follow-up to recoup their investment. The business also created a world where he got to meet his heroes (such as Paul McCartney and Robert Plant), whose extravagant, good-natured praise for him sent this already highly strung young soul over the edge. He was as handsome as Jim Morrison in his sleek prime as well as – to my eye – Adam Ant with a touch of Neil Innes.

Amy Berg’s arresting documentary of a death foretold explains how young Jeff and his mother were abandoned when he was an infant by his father, Tim Buckley, a singer and counterculture figure who was to die of a heroin overdose in his late 20s. Jeff was to die at about the same age, in an accidental drowning in Wolf River Harbor, Memphis, Tennessee, in 1997, when he was just 30.