The 19th edition of the Berlin & Beyond Film Festival, films from Germany, Austria, Switzerland and seven other nations, plays the Castro Theatre (1/29-2/1), San Francisco's Goethe-Institut (530 Bush St. at Grant, 2/1-2), Palo Alto's Aquarius Theatre (430 Emerson St., 2/2) and Berkeley's California Theatre (2113 Kittredge St., 2/3). Among the unscreened highlights are one of two entries from the prolific comedy director Doris Dorrie, This Lovely Shitty Life, advertised as embedding us with a band of female Mexican Mariachi singer-dancers (Castro, 1/31, 1 p.m.). Christian Petzold's Phoenix offers a unique take on a Holocaust-based tale, with a drama about a female concentration camp survivor whose life takes a startling turn after she undergoes reconstructive face surgery (Aquarius, 2/2, 7 p.m.).
Exit Marrakech (Germany/Morocco) In the opening scene of writer/director Caroline Link's captivating account of a teenage German boy's most unusual summer vacation, Ben (the slyly seductive newcomer Samuel Schneider) is quizzed by his portly faculty adviser about his plans to reunite with his long-absent dad, Heinrich (Ulrich Tukur), a self-indulgent hedonist who's spent the past decade in Morocco staging portentous experimental plays for jaded tourists and rich ex-pats. While approving of anything that will expose this sheltered/pampered lad to a taste of the real world, his teacher worries aloud that Ben, an aspiring fiction writer, isn't prepared for the culture shock presented by a desert nation and an adult male who's largely struck out in the dad department.
"I've read your stories, they're very good. What I don't like is that everything seems to bore you. You weren't always like this. What's wrong?"
"I don't know."
"Summer vacation is the time you're really free."
"You don't know my father."
Ben's live-wire spirit and bratty demeanor will reignite old disputes with Dad and send him on a journey into Morocco's interior, where he will experience far more than he bargained for in a film that deftly evokes some of the mysterious charisma about this desert kingdom so beautifully contained in queer novelist Paul Bowles' classic tale of lost travelers, The Sheltering Sky. (Festival Centerpiece, Castro, 1/31, 7 p.m.)
The Whole Shebang Writer/director Doris Dorrie brings her skills for taking satirical swipes at the lumpen middle-class to this farce set in Southern Spain, based on a middle-aged woman's flashbacks to loose living during the 1967 "Summer of Love." Our readers should enjoy the chaos in paradise instigated by a pushy transperson lounge singer. In German & Spanish w/English subtitles. (Castro, 2/1, 8:30 p.m., director Dorrie and lead Hannelore Eisner in person)
The King's Surrender (Germany) Writer/director Philipp Leinemann plunks us down inside an urban combat zone where a violent street gang dukes it out with the equally brutish members of a police SWAT team. The highlight is the activity of a teen who tries to get on the good side of the SWAT team's leader by bribing him with expensive electronic toys from his immigrant dad's store. (Director & lead Ronald Zehrfeld in person at the Castro, 1/30; Aquarius, 2/2, both at 9:15 p.m.)
The Dark Valley (Austria) Director Andreas Prochaska with co-writer Martin Ambrosch stage an "Alpine Western" with British actor Sam Riley (known for his sensational turn as the late Joy Division singer/writer Ian Curtis in Control) popping up in a bleak mountain village like Clint Eastwood's patented no-name "stranger." One of the rare examples screened in the US of a foreign-born filmmaker attempting to compete in a uniquely American genre, this one bears a style and the slow pacing of early Robert Altman, say McCabe & Mrs. Miller. German w/English subtitles. (Castro, 1/31, 10 p.m.)
Unlikely Heroes (Switzerland) Director Peter Luisi & co-writer Jurgen Ladenburger present a middle-aged woman abandoned by her family with the challenge of staging a play with a group of asylum-seekers. This fixation on the plight of asylum refugees pops up in several of this year's features. In Swiss German & German, with English subtitles. (Castro, 2/1, 1 p.m.; Aquarius, 2/2, 4:45 p.m.)
Amour Fou Writer/director Jessica Hausner explores a romantic "suicide pact" forged between a depressed male poet and a terminally ill young woman. Drawn from a real-life story from 1811, this one will appeal to fans of history-based romance where authentic period details allow us to completely surrender to the titillating vertigo of "dying for and with the love of one's life." (Castro, 2/1, 3:30 p.m.)
Run Boy Run The festival crosses over into the Jewish film festival's turf with director Pepe Danquart's WWII-era thriller about a nine-year-old Polish Jewish boy who survives the Nazi occupation by posing as a Christian war orphan. Based on an Israeli novel by Uri Orlev, this one in some ways presents parallels to the real-life childhood struggles of the always-controversial Polish director Roman Polanski. Presented in German, Polish, Yiddish and Hebrew, with English subtitles. (Castro, 1/30, 10 a.m.)
Info: BerlinBeyond.com.