'Berlin, I Love You' trailer stirs scorn

A new romantic film set in Berlin has been dismissed for being overly cliched by some of the city's critics and residents, months before it hits cinema screens.

Starring Helen Mirren, Keira Knightley, and Mickey Rourke, "Berlin, I Love You" portrays a series of love stories in the German capital city.

Distributor Saban Films published the film's first trailer online on Wednesday. In it, the film's protagonists are seen laughing, flirting and crying as they interact in different locations throughout the city.

Read more: Berlin's SPD wants to fund porn to fight sexism

A narrator says early in the trailer that Berlin is a place where people "to dream, to dance and to fall in love." Later in the clip, a character says they arrived "to restore my faith in life," followed by another character who declares that in Berlin, "everything is possible."

'Inapplicable Berlin cliches'

But some German critics and residents of Berlin were unimpressed.

"The worst thing that has befallen the German capital in recent years in terms of film," wrote a critic in the German version of VICE. The film, Lisa Ludwig wrote, deployed lots of Hollywood stars and "all of the inapplicable Berlin cliches" to sell its anthology of love stories.

Read more: Opinion: Keeping Berlin sexy

In another article, a writer for I Heart Berlin, a Berlin-themed lifestyle blog, wrote that Berliners were "shocked and shaken" by the trailer.

"It's as if someone had taken all of the Berlin hype and all its cliches from a decade ago to Hollywood and made something grotesque that feels like an insult to any Berliner," he wrote.

Newspaper critic calls for calm

Berlin, described by a former mayor as "poor, but sexy," has become one of Europe's most popular cities for young people seeking a cheaper and grungier alternative to London or Paris.

Responding to the trailer controversy, a critic in the local Berliner Morgenpost newspaper dismissed much of the criticism as overblown.

"Maybe it's just a terrible trailer?" wrote Peter Zander. "And do we really have to get up in arms about everything before we've even seen it?"

Each evening at 1830 UTC, DW's editors send out a selection of the day's hard news and quality feature journalism. You can sign up to receive it directly here.