Berlin Film Festival Unveils Competition Lineup (Updating Live)
The Berlin International Film Festival, the world’s largest public film festival, is announcing its full lineup today. The festival’s official press conference has begun, with new festival director Tricia Tuttle announcing the competition program for the 75th Berlinale. You can check out the live stream of the press conference here.
Opening the press conference, Tuttle nodded to Berlin’s reputation as the most political of the big festivals.
“People often ask me, and the press often ask me if we’re a political festival, and we cannot, and we do not shy away from this,” Tuttle said. “It’s arguably in the DNA of the city itself and also in the festival itself, but it’s fair to say that the Berlinale is many things, and for all festivals and all culture right now, the news agenda can often dominate the discourse, but we really hope, and we believe, that the films that audiences are going to see over the next over the weeks of the festival are going to get people talking about the vibrancy of the art form itself and the films themselves.”
There are certainly plenty of political talking points in the official lineup, which include the world premieres of Marcin Wierzchowski’s Das Deutsche Volk, a look at the far-right attacks in the German city of Hanau in 2020; Michtav Le’David (A Letter to David) from Israeli director Tom Shoval, a cinematic letter to his friend David Cunio, who was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7th; and My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow, a documentary from U.S. director Julia Loktev, which documents independent journalists in Moscow facing government crackdown as Russia invades Ukraine. All three films will screen in the Berlinale Special program.
Berlin has already announced most of the films screening in its gala sections this year, including Mickey 17, the sci-fi feature starring Robert Pattinson from Parasite director Bong Joon-Ho, which will bow out of competition, and Das Licht, the new film from German helmer Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run, Cloud Atlas), which will open the 2025 Berlinale on Feb. 13.
Berlin’s sidebars are also complete. The full lineup for Panorama — an “explicitly queer, explicitly feminist, explicitly political” section featuring indie arthouse cinema from around the world — as well as for Forum (experimental cinema) and Generation (youth and children’s films) were unveiled earlier this month.
Sidebar highlights include new features from arthouse favorites Ira Sachs (Peter Hujar’s Day), Denis Côté (Paul), and Michel Gondry (Maya, Give Me a Title).
U.S. director Todd Haynes (Carol, Far From Heaven), whose debut feature Poison won the Teddy Award at Berlin in 1991, is president of this year’s international jury which will pick the winners of Berlin’s Gold and Silver Bears.
