Berlinale 2025 Preview: Richard Linklater, Lucile Hadžihalilović, Radu Jude, Hong Sangsoo, Gabriel Mascaro
The 2025 Berlinale Film Festival, the first edition under the leadership of new American director Tricia Tuttle, unveiled its competition selection with 22 films vying for the Golden Bear. This year's selection is as diverse as it is ambitious, featuring celebrated auteurs and debuting filmmakers, with current themes from intimate character studies to sweeping socio-political commentaries.
Several films in the line-up tackle topics of personal growth and family. Léonor Serraille’s Ari follows a young teacher's journey of self-discovery after losing both his job and home, while Johanna Moder’s Mother’s Baby explores a mother’s struggle to connect with her newborn amidst a crumbling family dream. Meanwhile, Dreams (Sex Love) by Norwegian filmmaker Dag Johan Haugerud captures the ripples of unspoken desires across three generations of women in a single family.
Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon offers a personal historical drama, centering on lyricist Lorenz Hart’s inner turmoil on the night of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! debut. Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s Hot Milk, her feature debut feature, examines the tense, co-dependent relationship between a mother and daughter in a sun-soaked Spanish town.
Echoing global struggles, this year’s line-up includes films that navigate shifting social landscapes, including Radu Jude’s follow-up to the widely succesfull Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, Kontinental '25, which confronts the moral dilemmas of a bailiff forced to evict a homeless man, while Gabriel Mascaro’s The Blue Trail imagines a near-future where the elderly are exiled to remote colonies.
Lionel Baier’s The Safe House offers an eccentric lens on family and resistance during Paris’ 1968 protests, blending humor and poignancy. Similarly, Timestamp by Kateryna Gornostai provides a chronicles of the lives of schoolchildren amidst the challenges of war-torn Ukraine.
Michel Franco’s Dreams tells the story of a Mexican ballet dancer who crosses borders to chase artistic dreams, only to confront the fragility of love and ambition. Vivian Qu’s Girls on Wire weaves a gripping tale of a single mother forced into a life-or-death struggle. Meanwhile, Yunan by Ameer Fakher Eldin explores themes of solitude and redemption through an introspective narrative. Hong Sangsoo’s What Does that Nature Say to You exemplifies his signature conversational style, chronicling a young poet’s day spent with his girlfriend’s enigmatic family.
The competition includes films that blur the lines between reality and imagination. Lucile Hadžihalilović’s The Ice Tower is a hauntingly atmospheric tale of a runaway mesmerized by the enigmatic star of a film production. Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s Reflection in a Dead Diamond dives into a surreal collision of memory and madness, centered on an ex-spy’s colorful past. Frédéric Hambalek’s What Marielle Knows provides a lighter, yet insightful take on human nature, as a telepathic child forces her family to confront hidden truths.
The new programming team axed the competition Encounters, where films leaning more towards unconventional cinema premiered, and created a new competitive section, Perspectives, for emerging talents. Among the selected films are Mohamed Rashad's The Settlement, a poignant exploration of grief and injustice in Egypt; Shadowbox by Tanushree Das and Saumyananda Sahi, a gripping tale of family in India; and Kahlil Joseph's BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions, an immersive audiovisual journey through history and fiction.
Where the Night Stands Still by Liryc Dela Cruz is a heartfelt family drama set in Italy, and How to Be Normal and the Oddness of the Other World by Florian Pochlatko, is a portrayal of the protagonist who comes out of psychiatry and becomes torn between a new job, lovesickness, psychotropic drugs and social stigmatization.
Meanwhile, Chu Chun-Teng's Eel from Taiwan blends longing and mystery on a misty island, and Mad Bills to Pay by Joel Alfonso Vargas captures the vibrant chaos of a Bronx summer. Films like Urška Đukić’s Little Trouble Girls and Constanze Klaue’s Punching the World explore the turbulence of adolescence against unique cultural backdrops, while Valentine Cadic’s That Summer in Paris situates personal chaos amidst the spectacle of the Paris Olympics.
The Panorama section offers a selection of films from the world cinema about a range of topics from identity and belonging to social upheaval. Among the selected films are documentaries Under the Flags, the Sun, a haunting archival exploration of Alfredo Stroessner's dictatorship in Paraguay, and Paul, a tender portrait of a socially anxious man finding solace in his unconventional cleaning job.
Fiction highlights include Beginnings, Jeanette Nordahl's depiction of a couple forced to reconcile amidst personal crises, and Dreamers, Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor’s tale of love and resistance in a UK detention center. Stories such as The Ugly Stepsister reinterpret classic fairy tales, while films like Hysteria and Delicious tackle moral dilemmas. The animation Lesbian Space Princess brings an intergalactic queer rescue mission to life, and Yalla Parkour captures the raw energy of athleticism and nostalgia in Gaza.
COMPETITION
Ari - Léonor Serraille, France/Belgium, World premiere
Blue Moon - Richard Linklater, USA/Ireland, World premiere
The Safe House- Lionel Baier, Switzerland/Luxembourg/France, World premiere
Dreams - Michel Franco, Mexico, World premiere
Dreams (Sex Love) - Dag Johan Haugerud, Norway, International premiere
What Does That Nature Say to You - Hong Sangsoo, South Korea, World premiere
Hot Milk - Rebecca Lenkiewicz, United Kingdom, World premiere | Debut film
If I Had Legs I'd Kick You - Mary Bronstein, USA, International premiere
Kontinental ’25 - Radu Jude, Romania, World premiere
The Message - Iván Fund, Argentina/Spain, World premiere
Mother’s Baby"- Johanna Moder, Austria/Switzerland/Germany, World premiere
The Blue Trail"- Gabriel Mascaro, Brazil/Mexico/Chile/Netherlands, World premiere
Reflection in a Dead Diamond - Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani, Belgium/Luxembourg/Italy/France, World premiere
Living the Land - Huo Meng, People’s Republic of China, World premiere
Timestamp - Kateryna Gornostai, Ukraine/Luxembourg/Netherlands/France, World premiere | Documentary form
The Ice Tower - Lucile Hadžihalilović, France/Germany, World premiere
What Marielle Knows - Frédéric Hambalek, Germany, World premiere
Girls on Wire- Vivian Qu, People’s Republic of China, World premiere
Yunan - Ameer Fakher Eldin, Germany/Canada/Italy/Palestine/Qatar/Jordan/Saudi Arabia, World premiere
BERLINALE SPECIAL GALA
After This Death - Lucio Castro, USA, World premiere
A Complete Unknown- James Mangold, USA, German premiere
Late Shift - Petra Volpe, Switzerland/Germany, World premiere
slands- Jan-Ole Gerster, Germany, World premiere
Köln 7 - Ido Fluk, Germany/Poland/Belgium, World premiere
The Light- Tom Tykwer, Germany, World premiere
Lurker - Alex Russell, USA/Italy, International premiere | Debut film
Mickey 17 - Bong Joon Ho, USA/South Korea/United Kingdom, German premiere
The Thing With Feathers - Dylan Southern, United Kingdom, European premiere
BERLINALE SPECIAL SERIES GALA
The Narrow Road to the Deep North - Justin Kurzel, Australia, World premiere | Series
BERLINALE SPECIAL
Ancestral Visions of the Future - Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, France/Lesotho/Germany/Saudi Arabia, World premiere | Documentary form
Das Deutsche Volk"- Marcin Wierzchowski, Germany, World premiere | Documentary form
Honey Bunch- Madeleine Sims-Fewer & Dusty Mancinelli, Canada, World premiere
All I Had Was Nothingness - Guillaume Ribot, France, World premiere
No Beast. So Fierce - Burhan Qurbani, Germany/Poland/France, World premiere
Leibniz – Chronicle of a Lost Painting - Edgar Reitz & Anatol Schuster, Germany, World premiere
The Best Mother in the World- Anna Muylaert, Brazil/Argentina, World premiere
A Letter to David - Tom Shoval, Israel/USA, World premiere | Documentary form
My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow - Julia Loktev, USA, International premiere | Documentary form
The Old Woman With the Knife - Min Kyu-dong, South Korea, World premiere
Shoah - Claude Lanzmann, France
PERSPECTIVES
The Settlement - Mohamed Rashad, Egypt/France/Germany/Qatar/Saudi Arabia, World premiere
Shadowbox - Tanushree Das, Saumyananda Sahi, India/France/USA/Spain, World premiere
BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions - Kahlil Joseph, USA, International premiere | Debut film
Where the Night Stands Still - Liryc Dela Cruz, Italy/Philippines, World premiere
The Devil Smokes (and Saves the Burnt Matches in the Same Box - Ernesto Martínez Bucio, Mexico, World premiere | Debut film
Two Times João Liberada - Paula Tomás Marques, Portugal, World premiere | Debut film
Eel- Chu Chun-Teng, Taiwan, World premiere | Debut film
How to Be Normal and the Oddness of the Other World - Florian Pochlatko, Austria, World premiere | Debut film
Little Trouble Girls - Urška Đukić, Slovenia/Italy/Croatia/Serbia, World premiere | Debut film
Mad Bills to Pay - Joel Alfonso Vargas, USA, International premiere | Debut film
Growing Down - Bálint Dániel Sós, Hungary, World premiere | Debut film
Punching the World - Constanze Klaue, Germany, World premiere | Debut film
We Believe You - Arnaud Dufeys, Charlotte Devillers, Belgium, World premiere
That Summer in Paris - Valentine Cadic, France, World premiere | Debut film
Berlinale runs from February 13-23, the full line-up is available here.
