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Dau, the 700-hour behemoth of a cinema project, directed by Ilya Khrzhanovskiy, Jekaterina Oertel and Ilya Permyakov, caused quite a stir when two of its films premiered this year at Berlinale. The six-hour Dau. Degeneration and the four-hour Dau. Natasha both featured an extensive cast of mostly non-professional yet intensely watchable, often heartbreakingly convincing actors. Most of the project had been shot on the 42,000-square-feet set in Ukraine, which created an isolated, immersive atmosphere. With panache, some debauchery and plenty chugged vodka, the films inducted viewers into the universe of an isolated, top-secret Soviet research institute, where science and reason succumb to ruthless might and political machinations.In contrast to the sprawling Degeneration, and in line with the more intimate Natasha, the latest feature of the project to be released, Dau. Nora Mother, is modest. At just under one hour and thirty minutes, it feels slight, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

When Dau. Natasha premiered at the Berlinale less than a moon cycle ago it was unprecedented and an entirely unique film. We now have precedent for the Dau movies and they are the Dau movies themselves. Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s constructed totalitarian nightmare is justifiably taking fire at the moment (over allegations regarding consent and the mistreatment of actors) but if Degeneration is to be the last Dau feature to see the light of day it will be a fitting coda. Yes, Natasha was a startling introduction–as provocative as it was fascinating–but Degeneration is something else: the first Dau epic novel and, perhaps, the first masterpiece of the series.

All in all, the two are scarcely comparable. Natasha had a running time of 146 minutes and took place over the course of a few days in the early ‘50s, with only a spattering of events and characters seen on screen.

Early as it may be to provide a cogent assessment of the 70th Berlinale, the first edition under the new leadership of executive director Mariette Rissenbeek and artistic director Carlo Chatrian, fresh finds and new ideas seemed to herald much-welcomed changes to the festival's curatorial vision. Sure, the official competition—historically a mix bag often stashed with one too many crowd-pleasers under former Berlinale director Dieter Kosslick—may not have featured “many more truly great and prize-worthy contributions” than in the past, as noted by Andreas Kilb at Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. But in his thorough analysis of Chatrian’s first mandate, over at IndieWire Eric Kohn contends that the fest’s official lineup has always had to wrestle with a difficult calendar slot:Hamstrung by its placement after Sundance and before Cannes, [Berlin] must compete with both the most prominent festival in the U.S. and the most revered one in the world.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSJean-Luc Godard and Claude Chabrol at the Cahiers du Cinéma offices in 1959. (Photo by Jack Garofalo)Seven out of nine of the editorial staff of Cahiers du cinéma, which recently announced its new ownership by a group of "bankers, tech entrepreneurs, and film producers," have resigned. The writers have cited a conflict of interest regarding the publication of critical reviews. This year's Berlinale has come to an end. A complete catalog of coverage can be found here, along with a list of the festival's winners. Recommended VIEWINGNetflix has released a teaser for Damien Chazelle's Paris-set miniseries, The Eddy.Václav Marhoul's The Painted Bird, an adaptation of the controversial Jerzy Kosiriski novel, follows the wanderings of a young boy in Eastern Europe at the end of World War I. Read our review of the film here.

Above: Dau. DegenerationThere comes a scene in Dau. Degeneration, the smorgasbord of a film co- directed by Ilya Khrzhanovsky and Ilya Permyakov, when a pig is painted with anti-semitic and anti-democratic slogans, dragged out of a pigsty to a boarding house, where residents (mostly members of scientific community) are having dinner, and then savagely slaughtered and hacked to bits before them, by a ruthless Kgb-agent-in-training, as blood and guts gush out. The long scene’s visceral shock says much about Dau as a project—an endurance test of sorts, which the Dau directors and cast undertook by secluding themselves for three years to film what, by now, reportedly amounts to 700 hours of footage. The saga is dedicated to the malice of Soviet Russia, but, as one of the actors present at the Berlin Film Festival where the film premiered put it, truly to how Russia never digested its past,...

“Dau. Natasha,” the Russian art project-turned-movie franchise competing at the Berlinale, has triggered headlines in the local and international press over the years due to its epic scale, scenes of graphic violence and anecdotes of an allegedly oppressive work environment for women.

Hours before the film’s premiere at a presser on Wednesday, Ilya Khrzhanovsky, who co-directed “Dau. Natasha” with Jekaterina Oertel, addressed several questions from journalists about claims of harassment and a difficult on-set environment for women, saying that such accusations were “a bit fashionable” and a byproduct of the immersive nature of the film.

“I think what you’re referring to didn’t happen. It’s a rather odd project, so people go digging around, ‘Surely someone raped someone,’” he said. “This project was running for a long time and we worked with a lot of different people, and there were various conflict situations — but they all had...

Coproduction Office reveals first deals on ’Dau. Natasha’.

Four more Dau features are in post-production and ready to be unveiled at film festivals later this year and next, revealed Russian director Ilya Khrzhanovskiy, the co-director of Dau. Natasha, which is making its world premiere at the Berlinale tonight (February 26).

Dau. Natasha is the first standalone feature to emerge from the controversial multi-million dollar Dau immersive art project and is co-directed by Khrzhanovskiy and Jekaterina Oertel. Oertel was originally the head of makeup and hair design on the Dau project and took on an editing and co-direction role in post-production.

The...

Coproduction Office reveals first deals on ’Dau.Natasha’.

Four more Dau features are in post-production and ready to be unveiled at film festivals later this year and next, revealed Russian director Ilya Khrzhanovskiy, the co-director of Dau. Natasha, which is making its world premiere at the Berlinale tonight (February 26).

Dau. Natasha is the first standalone feature to emerge from the controversial multi-million dollar Dau immersive art project and is co-directed by Khrzhanovskiy and Jekaterina Oertel. Oertel was originally the head of make up and hair design on the Dau project and took on an editing and co-direction role in post production.