Thank you, Terrence Malick, for giving me one final finger by apparently having decided to open The Tree of Life at the Berlin Film Festival. First you blew off Cannes 2010 and then you signed with Fox Searchlight, which resulted in a decision not to release in 2010, and now this. Now I’ll have to shell out big dough to fly to Berlin in February, or suffer a certain loss of face by not being at the very first screening of The Tree of Life.

The Berlin booking isn’t confirmed but an allegedly well-informed guy named Cedric Succivalli has, according to In Contention‘s Guy Lodge, tweeted that The Tree of Life‘s French distributor EuropaCorp “has confirmed a February 23 release date, obviously ruling out a Cannes appointment three months later.” Malick’s last two films have played Berlin so draw your own conclusions. Sundance is almost certainly a dream.