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Berlin International Film Festival · 2025

Berlin International Film Festival 2025

Berlinale Special

Programme

23 films · 9 reviews

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After This Death

A woman’s affair with an enigmatic underground musician throws her life into chaos when he disappears. Forced to fend off his obsessive fans, she also has to confront her fractured marriage, and reclaim her identity and her future.

(Country: US; Year: 2025; Director: Lucio Castro; Writer: Lucio Castro; Stars: Gwendoline Christie, Rupert Friend, Lee Pace, Mía Maestro, Philip Ettinger, Jordan Carlos, Ollie Robinson, Stephanie Jean Lane, Laurent Rejto)

All I Had Was Nothingness (Je n'avais que le néant - "Shoah" par Lanzmann)

Forty years after the release of Claude Lanzmann’s monumental film Shoah, Guillaume Ribot reveals the director’s relentless pursuit to tell the untold, using only Lanzmann’s words and unseen footage from the masterpiece.

(Country: France; Year: 2025; Director: Guillaume Ribot)

Ancestral Visions Of The Future

A poetic allegory of the filmmaker Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese’s childhood, an ode to cinema and an inner nod to his mother.

(Country: France, Lesotho, Germany, Qatar, Saudi Arabia; Year: 2025; Director: Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese)

The Best Mother In The World (A melhor mãe do mundo)

To escape an abusive relationship, Gal puts her two young children into the recycling cart she uses to collect trash on the city’s streets and runs away. Alone and facing the dangers of homelessness, she convinces them that they are on an adventure.

(Director: Anna Muylaert; Stars: Shirley Cruz, Seu Jorge, Rihanna Barbosa, Benin Ayo)

A Complete Unknown

Review preview for A Complete Unknown

The world Dylan and the others inhabit...feels properly lived in.

Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
Biopic - following Bob Dylan from folk-singer to a worldwide sensation

(Country: United States; Year: 2024; Director: James Mangold; Writer: James Mangold, Jay Cocks, Elijah Wald; Stars: Timothée Chalamet, Joe Tippett, Edward Norton, Eriko Hatsune, Peter Gray Lewis, Peter Gerety, Lenny Grossman, David Wenzel, Scoot McNairy, Riley Hashimoto, Eloise Peyrot, Maya Feldman, Monica Barbaro, Dan Fogler, Reza Salazar)

Full review

Das Deutsche Volk

Tells the story of the victims’ relatives and the survivors of the racist attack in Hanau in 2020, in which nine young people were murdered because the perpetrator did not consider them to be German.

(Country: Germany; Year: 2025; Director: Marcin Wierzchowski)

Friendship's Death

Review preview for Friendship's Death

It is hard not to admire a film that manages, for all the shoestring meagreness of its budget, to be so broad in its ambitions.

Anton Bitel · 2.5 out of 5
A war correspondent's conversation with an extraterrestrial amid the chaos of Black September.

(Country: UK; Year: 1987; Director: Peter Wollen; Writer: Peter Wollen; Stars: Ruby Baker, Patrick Bauchau, Joumana Gill, Bill Paterson, Tilda Swinton)

Full review

Heldin

Floria, a nurse, works with unwavering dedication in an understaffed hospital ward. But today, her shift turns into a nerve-racking race against time.

(Country: Switzerland, Germany; Year: 2025; Director: Petra Biondina Volpe; Writer: Petra Biondina Volpe; Stars: Leonie Benesch, Jasmin Mattei, Alireza Bayram, Aline Beetschen, Lale Yavas, Margherita Schoch, Urbain Guiguemde, Jürg Plüss, Sonja Riesen, Andreas Beutler, Ali Kandas, Dominique Lendi, Urs Bihler, Selma Jamal Aldin, Doris Schefer)

Honey Bunch

Review preview for Honey Bunch

There’s a genuine unpredictability to Honey Bunch, both structurally and thematically.

Jennie Kermode · 4 out of 5
Diana’s husband is taking her to an experimental trauma facility deep in the wilderness, but she cannot remember why ... As her memories begin to creep back in, so do some unwelcome sinister truths about her marriage.

(Country: Canada, UK; Year: 2025; Director: Dusty Mancinelli, Madeleine Sims-Fewer; Writer: Dusty Mancinelli, Madeleine Sims-Fewer; Stars: Jason Isaacs, Kate Dickie, Julian Richings, Grace Glowicki, India Brown, Ben Petrie, Jimi Shlag)

Full review See: Interview with Dusty Mancinelli and Madeleine Sims-Fewer about Honey Bunch

Islands

Review preview for Islands

The actors...own their characters with considerable skill which helps to paper over any deficiencies in the script

Richard Mowe · 3 out of 5
Tom, a tennis coach at a luxury hotel, has his life changed when a new family arrives. Matters take a dark turn when the husband disappears and both Tom and the wife become suspects.

(Country: Germany; Year: 2025; Director: Jan-Ole Gerster; Writer: Lawrie Doran, Jan-Ole Gerster, Blaz Kutin; Stars: Stacy Martin, Sam Riley, Jack Farthing, Bruna Cusí, Dylan Torrell, Pep Ambròs, Fatima Adoum, Maya Unger, Ahmed Boulane, Fernando Navas)

Full review

Köln 75

Review preview for Köln 75

Emde is a force to be reckoned with. The film could not have been made any other way.

Jennie Kermode · 4 out of 5
The true story of Vera Brandes, teenage patron saint of the 1970s Cologne music scene, who risked everything to organise the greatest solo jazz concert in music history: Keith Jarrett’s legendary Köln Concert.

(Country: Belgium, Poland, Germany; Year: 2025; Director: Ido Fluk; Writer: Ido Fluk; Stars: Mala Emde, John Magaro, Alexander Scheer, Ulrich Tukur, Jördis Triebel, Susanne Wolff, Shirin Lilly Eissa, Marie-Lou Sellem, Leo Meier, Michael Chernus, Corey Johnson, Nikolai Kinski, Julius Feldmeier, Uwe Preuss, Enno Trebs)

Full review See: Vera Brandes on Köln 75 and with Ed Bahlman the music scene

Leibniz - Chronicle Of A Lost Painting (Leibniz - Chronik eines verschollenen Bildes)

Out of her love for the great thinker Leibniz, Queen Charlotte commissions a portrait of him. The sittings become a dramatic search for the secret of art, love and veracity in painting.

(Country: Germany; Year: 2025; Director: Edgar Reitz; Stars: Edgar Selge, Aenne Schwarz, Lars Eidinger, Michael Kranz, Antonia Bill)

A Letter To David (Michtav Le'David)

Ten years ago, David Cunio starred in Tom Shoval’s debut feature film Youth, which revolved around a kidnapping. On October 7, 2023, Cunio was taken from the Nir Oz kibbutz and has been held hostage in Gaza ever since. Now, Shoval sends him a cinematic letter.

(Country: Israel, US; Year: 2025; Director: Tom Shoval; Writer: Tom Shoval; Stars: David Cunio, Eitan Cunio, Silvia Cunio, Luis Cunio, Sharon Aloni)

The Light (Das Licht)

The Engels family is comfortably living separate lives under the same roof until the enigmatic Farrah, their new housekeeper who has just arrived in Berlin from Syria, enters their lives and challenges each of them in unexpected ways.

(Country: Germany; Year: 2025; Director: Tom Tykwer; Stars: Lars Eidinger, Nicolette Krebitz, Marius Biegai, Michael Ihnow, Jessica Brösicke, Francisco del Solar, Max Kruk, Ruby M. Lichtenberg, Elyas Eldridge, Julius Gause, Victoire Laly, Anna Shirin Habedank, Gerrit Neuhaus, Elke Biesendorfer, Goran Mitrovski)

Lurker

Review preview for Lurker

In line with his economic storytelling, Russell has a gift for conveying little details through subtle performance notes where other filmmakers might telegraph intent.

Jeremy Mathews · 4.5 out of 5
A retail employee infiltrates the inner circle of an artist on the verge of stardom. As he gets closer to the budding music star, access and proximity become a matter of life and death.

(Country: US; Year: 2025; Director: Alex Russell; Writer: Alex Russell; Stars: Havana Rose Liu, Sunny Suljic, Archie Madekwe, Daniel Zolghadri, Théodore Pellerin, Mikaela Poon, Rene Leech, Hannah Christine Shetler, Willa Jane Shaw, Zack Fox)

Full review

Mickey 17

Review preview for Mickey 17

Bong loses the thread in numerous half-baked sub-plots whose inflation takes its toll on the bloated runtime.

Marko Stojiljkovic · 2 out of 5
The unlikely hero, Mickey Barnes, has found himself in the extraordinary circumstance of working for an employer who demands the ultimate commitment to the job … to die, for a living.

(Country: South Korea, US; Year: 2025; Director: Bong Joon Ho; Writer: Bong Joon Ho, Edward Ashton; Stars: Robert Pattinson, Steven Yeun, Michael Monroe, Patsy Ferran, Cameron Britton, Christian Patterson, Lloyd Hutchinson, Samuel Blenkin, Ian Hanmore, Sabet Choudhury, Tim Key, Rose Shalloo, Bronwyn James, Holliday Grainger, Milo James)

Full review

My Undesirable Friends: Part I - Last Air in Moscow

Documentary on the persistence of independent journalism in Putin’s Russia.

(Year: 2024; Director: Julia Loktev)

The Narrow Road To The Deep North

A celebrated Second World War hero is haunted by his experiences in a Japanese prisoner of war camp and memories of an affair that took place just before the war in this adaptation of Richard Flanagan’s Booker Prize-winning novel.

(Country: Australia, US; Year: 2025; Director: Justin Kurzel; Writer: Richard Flanagan, Shaun Grant; Stars: Jacob Elordi, Odessa Young, Masa Yamaguchi, Max Berkman, Joel Aaron Baker, Luca Timpano Bilbatua, Callum Pritchard, Taki Abe, Jack McGreal, Damian Hempstead, Jeremy Blewitt, Brendan Kelly, George Simitzis, Annie Shapero, Juan Bianchi)

No Beast. So Fierce. (Kein Tier. So Wild.)

After a bloody gang war, Rashida, the youngest daughter of the Yorks, rises to become the leader of the Berlin underworld. Shakespeare’s Richard III is retold in the here and now as the story of an Arab gangster queen.

(Country: Germany; Year: 2024; Director: Burhan Qurbani; Stars: Mehdi Nebbou, Hiam Abbass, Hassan Akkouch, Ibrahim Al-Khalil, Verena Altenberger, Deniz Arora, Samir Fuchs, Phileas Heyblom, Kenda Hmeidan, Tamer Karabay, Mona Zarreh Hoshyari Khah)

The Old Woman with the Knife (Pa-gwa)

Hornclaw, a legendary assassin in her 60s, specialises in eliminating the scum of the earth. She has learned to accept loss but finds new meaning in her mundane yet bloody life when she meets Bullfight, a promising young killer who wants to work with her.

(Country: South Korea; Year: 2025; Director: Min Kyu-dong; Writer: Gu Byeong-mo, Kim Dong-wan-II, Min Kyu-dong; Stars: Kim Mu-yeol, Kim Sung-cheol, Cynthia, Lee Hye-yeong, Yang Ju-mi)

Shoah

The story of the Holocaust told through interviews with survivors, witnesses and some of those responsible.

(Country: France; Year: 1985; Director: Claude Lanzmann)

The Thing With Feathers

Review preview for The Thing With Feathers

A sometimes compelling, often baffling work that doesn’t really solve the inherent problem of its subject matter, but swings for the fences trying.

Jeremy Mathews · 2.5 out of 5
Struggling to process the sudden and unexpected death of his wife, a young father loses his hold on reality as a seemingly malign presence begins to stalk him from the shadowy recesses of the apartment he shares with his two young sons.

(Country: UK; Year: 2025; Director: Dylan Southern; Writer: Dylan Southern; Stars: Benedict Cumberbatch, David Thewlis, Sam Spruell, Jessie Cave, Leo Bill, Vinette Robinson, Tim Plester, Adam Basil, Garry Cooper, Pierre Bergman, Eric Lampaert, Claire Cartwright, Lesley Molony, Joakim Skarli, Max Porter)

Full review

Yella

Review preview for Yella

This is, in places, a deeply disturbing film... yet the touching scenes, when they come, have a surprisingly emotional depth.

Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
Metaphysical thriller about a woman trying to escape her past and build a future.

(Country: Germany; Year: 2007; Director: Christian Petzold; Writer: Simone Baer, Christian Petzold; Stars: Nina Hoss, Devid Striesow, Hinnerk Schönemann, Burghart Klaußner, Barbara Auer, Christian Redl, Selin Bademsoy, Wanja Mues, Michael Wittenborn, Martin Brambach, Joachim Nimtz)

Full review