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Berlin International Film Festival · 2026

Berlin International Film Festival 2026

Competition

Programme

15 films · 5 reviews

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At The Sea

After rehab, Laura returns to her family at their beach holiday home where sobriety forces her to confront buried trauma.

(Country: US, Hungary; Year: 2026; Director: Kornél Mundruczó; Writer: Kata Wéber; Stars: Amy Adams, Murray Bartlett, Brett Goldstein, Chloe East, Dan Levy, Jenny Slate, Rainn Wilson, Henry Eikenberry, Naheem Garcia)

Dao

A wedding in Paris and a ceremony in Guinea-Bissau are intertwined in this consideration of family and heritage.

(Country: France, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal; Year: 2026; Director: Alain Gomis; Writer: Alain Gomis; Stars: Katy Correa, Katy Correa, D'Johé Kouadio, Samir Guesmi, Mike Etienne, Nicolas Gomis, Fara Baco)

Dust

At the end of the 90s Belgian tech boom, two entrepreuneurs watch their empire collapse.

(Country: Belgium, Poland, Greece, United Kingdom; Year: 2026; Director: Anke Blondé; Writer: Angelo Tijssens; Stars: Jan Hammenecker, Arieh Worthalter, Éric Godon, Dima Savyan, Thibaud Dooms, Janne Desmet, Verona Verbakel, Armin Mola, Fania Sorel, Koen Verledens, Robin Keyaert, Anthony Welsh, Aldona Jankowska)

Everybody Digs Bill Evans

When a jazz pianist loses his soulmate in a car crash, this is the story of what happens next.

(Country: Ireland, UK; Year: 2026; Director: Grant Gee; Writer: Mark O'Halloran; Stars: Anders Danielsen Lie, Bill Pullman, Laurie Metcalf, Isabelle Harriet)

Flies (Moscas)

Olga rents out a room to a man whose wife has been admitted to a hospital nearby. However, the man has a nine-year-old son he has been sneaking into the room, which leads to Olga’s carefully controlled world shifting as their lives become intertwined.

(Country: Mexico; Year: 2026; Director: Fernando Eimbcke; Writer: Fernando Eimbcke, Vanesa Garnica; Stars: Teresa Sánchez, Bastián Escobar, Hugo Ramirez)

See: Fernando Eimbcke on fun and games in Flies

Home Stories (Etwas Ganz Besonderes)

A reality show asks a woman what makes her special prompting her to start a search for her identity.

(Country: Germany; Year: 2026; Director: Eva Trobisch; Writer: Eva Trobisch; Stars: Frida Hornemann, Eva Löbau, Rahel Ohm, Peter René Lüdicke, Max Riemelt, Gina Henkel, Florian Lukas, Ida Fischer, Florian Geißelmann, Thomas Schubert, Nairi Hadodo, Luna Marie Kim, Anton Petzold, Kara Schröder, Maren Kling)

In A Whisper (A Voix Basse)

Review preview for In A Whisper

What follows is not a simple coming-out narrative and not a whodunit either, but an internal struggle constantly externalised through ritual and space.

Edin Custo · 3.5 out of 5
Lilia returns to Tunisia for her uncle’s funeral and reunites with a family that knows nothing about her life in Paris, especially not about the woman she loves.

(Year: 2026; Director: Leyla Bouzid; Writer: Leyla Bouzid; Stars: Marion Barbeau, Eya Bouteraa, Hiam Abbass, Feriel Chamari)

Full review

Josephine

Review preview for Josephine

De Araújo is particularly good at evoking the emotional turmoil Jo feels.

Amber Wilkinson · 4.5 out of 5
After 8-year-old Josephine accidentally witnesses a crime in Golden Gate Park, she acts out in search of a way to regain control of her safety while adults are helpless to console her.

(Country: US; Year: 2026; Director: Beth de Araújo; Writer: Beth de Araújo; Stars: Mason Reeves, Channing Tatum, Gemma Chan, Philip Ettinger, Syra McCarthy, Eleanore Pienta, Gretchen Klein, Nate Duncan, Tracy Todd, Grace Kelly Quigley, Malcolm Engel)

Full review See: Beth de Araújo Channing Tatum and others talk about a child's eye view of crime in Josephine

My Wife Cries (Meine Frau Weint)

A normal working day on a construction site. Thomas, a 40-year-old crane operator, receives a call from his wife asking him to pick her up from the hospital. He finds her crying.

(Country: Germany, France; Year: 2026; Director: Angela Schanelec; Writer: Angela Schanelec; Stars: Agathe Bonitzer, Birte Schnöink, Vladimir Vulević, Pauline Rebmann, Clara Gostynski, Ninel Skrzypczyk, Thorbjörn Björnsson, Laure-Lucille Simon, Theodore Vrachas, Ben Carter)

A New Dawn

Keitaro lives in a fireworks factory that is about to be shut down. He is determined to unravel the mystery of the Shuhari, a mythical firework created by his father before he disappeared without a trace – and launch it before the factory closes.

(Country: Japan, France; Year: 2026; Director: Yoshitoshi Shinomiya; Writer: Yoshitoshi Shinomiya; Stars: Riku Hagiwara, Kotone Furukawa, Miyu Irino, Takashi Okabe)

Nina Roza

A viral video of a young Bulgarian catches the eye of a major art collector, and Mihail is sent there, 30 years after leaving his home country, to assess the value of the girl's work.

(Country: Canada, Bulgaria, Italy, Belgium; Year: 2026; Director: Geneviève Dulude-De Celles; Writer: Geneviève Dulude-De Celles; Stars: Galin Stoev, Ekatarina Stanina, Sofia Stanina, Chiara Caselli, Christian Bégin, Michelle Tzontchev, Mart Lachev, Nikolay Mutafchiev, Svetlana Yancheva, Maria-Radena Bozhkova, Sylvie Lemay, Alexia Roc, Raphaël Fournier)

Queen At Sea

Review preview for Queen At Sea

Lance Hammer’s drama confronts its subject unsentimentally head on with no holds barred.

Richard Mowe · 4 out of 5
As advanced dementia erodes an older woman’s ability to communicate her inner life, her husband and daughter struggle to act in her best interests, navigating love and the fragile boundaries between care, protection and autonomy.

(Country: UK, US; Year: 2026; Director: Lance Hammer; Writer: Lance Hammer; Stars: Juliette Binoche, Tom Courtenay, Steven Cree, Florence Hunt, Anna Calder-Marshall, Michelle Jeram, Elizabeth Rushbrook, Noah Hunt Basden)

Full review See: Courtenay and Calder-Marshall on intimacy, trust and the value of friendship

Rose

Review preview for Rose

Apart from setting the tone and maintaining it, the strongest point of Schleinzer’s filmmaking is casting and directing the actors' interactions between one another and the environment.

Marko Stojiljkovic · 4 out of 5
A woman disguises herself as a man in 17th Century Germany.

(Country: Austria, Germany; Year: 2026; Director: Markus Schleinzer; Writer: Markus Schleinzer, Alexander Brom; Stars: Sandra Hüller, Caro Braun, Marisa Growaldt (voice), Godehard Giese, Maria Dragus, Augustino Renken, Robert Gwisdek, Sven-Eric Bechtolf, Rainer Egger, Maurice Leonhard, Bastian Trost)

Full review

Salvation (Kurtulus)

In a remote village, an exiled clan returns, reviving a decades-old land feud. Seized by divine visions, Mesut challenges his brother’s leadership to save his people. Will this new path bring salvation or tragedy?

(Country: Turkey, France, Netherlands, Greece, Sweden, Saudi Arabia; Year: 2006; Director: Emin Alper; Stars: Caner Cindoruk, Berkay Ateş, Feyyaz Duman, Naz Göktan, Özlem Taş, Eren Demirbaş, Mehmet Selim Akgul, Hichi Demi)

Yellow Letters

Review preview for Yellow Letters

What the narrative wants to test is the cost of principled resistance when you have a child to protect

Edin Custo · 2.5 out of 5
Life is good for Derya and Aziz, a celebrated artist couple from Turkey, until an incident at their play’s premiere. Suddenly targeted by the state and struggling to balance their ideals with life’s necessities, their marriage is pushed to a breaking point.

(Country: France, Germany, Turkey; Year: 2026; Director: İlker Çatak; Writer: İlker Çatak, Ayda Meryem Çatak, Enis Köstepen; Stars: Özgü Namal, Tansu Biçer, Leyla Smyrna Cabas, Şiir Eloğlu, Eray Egilmez, Marco Kühn, Yusuf Akgün, Kerem Can, Aziz Çapkurt)

Full review