CLOSING NIGHT

BlackBerry

MATT JOHNSON
Canada, 2023
124 minutes, Color

Two mismatched entrepreneurs—egghead innovator Mike Lazaridis and cut-throat businessman Jim Balsillie—joined forces in an endeavor that was to become a worldwide hit in little more than a decade. The device that one of them invented and the other sold was the BlackBerry, an addictive mobile phone that changed the way the world worked, played, and communicated. But just as BlackBerry was rising to new peaks, it also started losing its way through the fog of smartphone wars, management indecision, and outside distractions, eventually leading to the breakdown of one of the most successful ventures in the history of the tech and business worlds. In his earlier works (The Dirties, Operation Avalanche), Matt Johnson has proven how irresistible an urge it is for cineastes equipped with cameras to capture on film that which seems incredible or even impossible. His are the stories of seemingly unremarkable individuals who are tempted to achieve something that nobody else has. Coupled with his own brand of savage humor, Johnson amazes us with this story of two Canadian guys who, in between movie nights, invented the tool that, for better or worse, changed our way of doing pretty much everything.—Berlin International Film Festival

Followed by a reception at Penn Social, cash bar.