Berlin Forum Unveils Full 2025 Lineup

Berlin Forum Unveils Full 2025 Lineup

The Berlin International Film Festival has announced its full lineup for the 55th Forum section, the festival’s sidebar focusing on experimental and avant-garde cinema.

Section head Barbara Wurm said the 2025 selection aims to showcase contemporary cinema that “moves beyond the cult and the commercial” while functioning as a “seismograph of our time.”

The program’s exploration of time is highlighted by Stefan Hayn’s 2024 (2023), which juxtaposes political Berlin with private Bavaria, utilizing both film and painting as frames for observation. Cao Yiwen’s AI-driven What’s Next? poses a philosophical question about the future, while Su Hui-Yu’s The Trio Hall presents a pastiche featuring historical dictators engaged in theatrical performances.

Around half the films at this year’s Forum are documentaries, with highlights including Tatiana Fuentes Sadowski’s The Memory of Butterflies, a reconstruction of Indigenous slavery and colonial crimes; Lee Anne Schmitt’s Evidence, which explores dark money and neo-conservative ideology in the USA; and Nayibe Tavares-Abel’s Colossal, a dissection of the political history of the Dominican Republic.

Wurm describes 2025 as a year focusing on “wounded souls who are ground down by dispassionate systems and unyielding regimes.”

The Forum selection ranges across genres and styles, from Jan Eilhardt’s semi-autobiographical German drama Janine Moves to the Country to Elmar Imanov’s surreal feature The Kiss of the Grasshopper, to Kazakh horror film Cadet from director Adilkhan Yerzhanov to Fwends, a female-buddy mumblecore feature from Australian director Sophie Somerville.

The full list of 2025 Berlin Forum titles is below:

2024 by Stefan Hayn
Germany 2025, Forum, World premiere, Documentary form

After Dreaming by Christine Haroutounian
USA / Armenia / Mexico 2025, Forum, World premiere, Debut film

Houses by Veronica Nicole Tetelbaum
Israel / Germany 2025, Forum, World premiere, Debut film

Spring Night by Kang Mi-ja
South Korea 2024, Forum, International premiere

Cadet by Adilkhan Yerzhanov
Kazakhstan 2024, Forum, European premiere

Canone effimero by Gianluca De Serio, Massimiliano De Serio
Italy 2025, Forum, World premiere, Documentary form

Time to the Target by Vitaly Mansky
Latvia / Czechia / Ukraine 2025, Forum, World premiere, Documentary form

Colossal by Nayibe Tavares-Abel
Dominican Republic 2025, Forum, World premiere, Debut film, Documentary form

Evidence by Lee Anne Schmitt
USA 2025, Forum, World premiere, Documentary form

Fwends by Sophie Somerville
Australia 2025, Forum, World premiere, Debut film

Holding Liat by Brandon Kramer
USA 2025, Forum, World premiere, Documentary form

Janine Moves to the Country by Jan Eilhardt
Germany 2025, Forum, World premiere

The Kiss of the Grasshopper by Elmar Imanov
Germany / Luxembourg / Italy 2025, Forum, World premiere

little boy by James Benning
USA 2025, Forum, World premiere, Documentary form

The Memory of Butterflies by Tatiana Fuentes Sadowski
Peru / Portugal 2025, Forum, World premiere, Debut film, Documentary form

Minimals in a Titanic World by Philbert Aimé Mbabazi Sharangabo
Rwanda / Germany / Cameroon 2025, Forum, World premiere, Debut film

Palliative Care Unit by Philipp Döring
Germany 2025, Forum, World premiere, Debut film, Documentary form

Punku by Juan Daniel Fernández Molero
Peru / Spain 2025, Forum, World premiere

Queer as Punk by Yihwen Chen
Malaysia / Indonesia 2025, Forum, World premiere, Documentary form

Eighty Plus by Želimir Žilnik
Serbia / Slovenia 2025, Forum, World premiere

The Sense of Violence by Kim Mooyoung
South Korea 2024, Forum, International premiere, Documentary form

Sirens Call by Miri Ian Gossing, Lina Sieckmann
Germany / Netherlands 2025, Forum, World premiere, Debut film

The Swan Song of Fedor Ozerov by Yuri Semashko
Lithuania 2025, Forum, World premiere, Debut film

The Trio Hall by Su Hui-yu
Taiwan 2025, Forum, World premiere

Underground by Kaori Oda
Japan 2024, Forum, International premiere, Documentary form

Our Time Will Come by Ivette Löcker
Austria 2025, Forum, World premiere, Documentary form

Tiger’s Pond by Natesh Hegde
India / Singapore 2025, Forum, World premiere

If You Are Afraid You Put Your Heart into Your Mouth and Smile by Marie Luise Lehner
Austria 2025, Forum, World premiere, Debut film

What’s next? by Cao Yiwen
Hong Kong, China 2025, Forum, World premiere, Debut film

When Lightning Flashes Over the Sea by Eva Neymann
Germany / Ukraine 2025, Forum, World premiere, Documentary form