Berlinale reviews - No Good Men opening movie & Yellow Letters competition movie by David Katz

The opening press conferences at major festivals are always good fodder for journalists seeking an eye-catching early story, and yesterday’s jury unveiling at the 2026 Berlinale was never going to be a subdued, cordial affair. After a question on the “selective solidarity” of the festival towards the conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine and Iran, jury president Wim Wenders - seemingly well-prepared for this line of attack - claimed that cinema and politics should have an antithetical relationship, and that filmmakers “have to do the work of people, not politicians”.

Whilst this is true to the temperament of Wenders’ work across his career, it’s a strange admission, considering the festival has perennially specialised in films advocating for a certain agenda, or doling out harsh criticism of their countries of origin. No Good Men, the opening night film, directed by Afghan filmmaker Shahrbanoo Sadat, is in keeping with this tradition, with the director taking inspiration from her life, and the state of women’s equality, prior to the Taliban’s renewed takeover in August 2021. Hailed so far as an unusually strong opener for the festival, the director sought to make an unashamed political “romcom”, contrasting with the usual serious-minded arthouse filmmaking from the region, but not being aware of this intention as I sat down to it, its lack of success in the “com” department made me assume I was watching an ordinary realist drama.

Sadat herself ably plays the lead Naru, an ambitious camerawoman bridling at the condescension she gets at the “boys club” TV network Kabul News (a fictionalised spin on a real Afghan broadcaster, that had apparent liberal credentials). She’s separated from her husband, and lives with her young son Liam, but refuses a formal divorce as that would lose her custody of him. When assigned to interview a Taliban leader with the channel’s star journalist Qodrat (Anwar Hashimi, a longtime collaborator of the director’s), he initially doesn’t take her seriously, bemoaning that he isn’t working with a “proper journalist”, but soon the professional tension between them thaws, and romantic chemistry arises.

With the story’s timeline initially beginning in February of that year, when the US occupation was beginning to withdraw, we feel a sense of fatalism knowing what will unfold, yet Naru and her female friends’ upbeat attitude is endearing (which includes a more liberated dual citizen of the US, who gives them a belated introduction to adult gifts). Together, they’re an emblem for the nuanced ways a generation of Afghan women were resisting the dominant patriarchal attitudes, even before the Taliban’s restrictions. Yet this more light-hearted narrative is still an awkward container for introducing the social devastation that will follow, and the screenplay also doesn’t sell how Qodrat would so happily shake off his previous toxicity. The title No Good Men is meant to signify ironically, but it would register with more anger and conviction taken wholly seriously.

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Premiering in the festival’s less-fancied Panorama section in 2023, İlker Çatak’s The Teachers’ Lounge became a runaway international hit and was nominated for an Oscar, beckoned by its canny understanding of modern educational mores, and Leonie Benesch’s spirited performance. Bowing on the competition’s first day, his follow-up feature Yellow Letters is even more directly political, set in Turkey but filmed with a Brechtian lack of disguise in present-day Berlin and Hamburg, yet also about the travails of keeping your integrity and cool in oppressive professional settings.

Being the story of a faltering marriage between an eminent artist couple, the screenplay (credited to the director, Ayda Meryem Çatak and Enis Köstepen) interestingly asks the question if a bond like that can withstand the kind of political censure fostered in Erdoğan’s Turkey, of if its cause originates in something unbalanced already affecting it. After receiving the titular “yellow letters”, meaning that the husband Aziz (Tansu Biçer) can’t stage his plays and teach, and his actress spouse Derya (Özgü Namal) can’t perform in them, they lose their stature, livelihood and home in Ankara, and are forced to move to Aziz’s mother’s small apartment in Istanbul with their angsty daughter Ezgi (Leyla Smyrna Cabas).

Although Çatak is skilful with actors, especially those playing characters faced with a humbling, and drumming up the stakes of suspense, the film overall suffers from being too politically vague, particularly as regards to the wider circumstances in Turkey beyond how it immediately affects Ayda and Derya. Coupled with its sense of self-righteousness - its assurance in being an impeccable, liberal political statement - and it starts to feel like the work of a director allying himself to a cause, in his ancestral home and not his actual one, he can’t advocate for with a full breadth.