Dieci film che attendiamo con ansia alla Berlinale 2025

The diamond is a fitting three-quarters-of-a-century jubilee symbol for the storied Berlinale’s 75th anniversary: no matter how much it’s struck at, the festival still seems to gleam. But the air at the 2025 edition is laden, perhaps as usual now, with eventful news – including major federal cuts in cultural funding, leading to Berliners’ fears for the future of staple arts institutions of all kinds in the city.

Even more notably, the crucial 2025 federal elections land on the very last day of the festival, when Germans will roll out en masse to elect their next political representatives (and, by proxy, the new chancellor). The right-wing, staunchly anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party polls in a close second, leading to mass protests across urban parts of the country, including an estimated 160,000 gathered in front of Berlin’s Reichstag just one week ago. Audiences will be sure to find films that speak to the festival’s response to the political climate and a broader national reaction to a multitude of international crises.

Many filmmakers and audiences continue to come head to head with Germany’s and the festival’s strict positionality towards the Israel-Hamas conflict, where creative industry groups have called for a boycott of the Berlinale once more. 2025 sees the inauguration of former BFI London Film Festival helmer Tricia Tuttle as the Berlinale’s new boss, who has previously labelled the event’s stance as “putting artists off” taking part. On the stylistic side, she has plucked away the Encounters sidebar to make way for Perspectives, the fiction features-only emerging filmmaker strand. Whether it’s better to have an “encounter” with a film or take a new “perspective” from one is yet to be determined; this year’s selection will undoubtedly be a litmus test for her tenure – and whether audience outrage (or excitement) has been justified.

But it’s not all bad in the German capital: great changes have come to Berlin’s sociolegal system, where the immigration office oversaw the abolishment of its fax number and, at long last, the instalment of a brand-new online application form for those seeking long-term visas.

As a preface to Cineuropa’s comprehensive coverage, we bring to you ten of the most hotly anticipated films for the 2025 festival, which eager viewers will be able to catch all around the city. Amidst increasingly frequent strikes by employees of Berlin’s public-transport company BVG, hope for minimal delays on that crucial U2 metro line between Potsdamer Platz and the zoo. See you at the Palast!

Mickey 17 – Bong Joon-ho (USA/South Korea)

(Berlinale Special Gala)

It’s fair to say we’re living in a post-Parasite world. Following that film’s 2019 Palme d’Or victory and 2020 Best Picture Oscar, contemporary cinema – from box-office trends to screenplay loglines – feels made in its image. So it’s curious that Bong seems to have stumbled a bit with his long-awaited, English-language follow-up, finally touching down at the Berlinale amid several release-date shifts and rumours of reshoots. Robert Pattinson is Mickey, an off-world space labourer whose consciousness can be rebooted in a clone of his body if he dies.
Premieres 18:30, Saturday 15 February, at Berlinale Palast

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You – Mary Bronstein (USA)

(Competition)

Apparently, some things are worth the wait. Fresh off a streak of glowing reviews from Sundance flies in Mary Bronstein’s sophomore film, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, which comes long after her SXSW mumblecore feature debut, Yeast (2008), starring herself and Greta Gerwig. The dark, anxious dramedy stars US comedic favourite Rose Byrne as Linda, an exhausted mother navigating an increasingly hostile set of life conditions. The writer-director further stacks her cast with Conan O’Brien as Linda’s therapist and an appearance by rapper A$AP Rocky as a motel superintendent.
Premieres 21:45, Monday 17 February, at Berlinale Palast

Yunan – Ameer Fakher Eldin (Germany/Canada/Italy/Palestine/Qatar/Jordan/Saudi Arabia)

(Competition)

Good advance word surrounds this second feature from Ameer Fakher Eldin, a Syrian-descended filmmaker now based in Germany. The film follows Munir (Georges Khabbaz), an exiled Arab author who travels to a remote island as he assesses taking a drastic action. Whilst there, he encounters Valeska (the great Hanna Schygulla) and her “rough-hewn, but loyal” son Karl, and their growing bond leads to a meaningful change in fortunes for Munir. Based on this summary, and his well-liked previous movie The Stranger [+leggi anche:
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Premieres 18:30, Wednesday 19 February, at Berlinale Palast

Kontinental ‘25 – Radu Jude (Romania/Brazil/Switzerland/UK/Luxembourg)

(Competition)

Nearly every year since 2015, we have been blessed with a new Radu Jude feature, and this year, we may count ourselves doubly blessed as he makes his first of two entries with Kontinental ’25, inspired by Italian neorealist Roberto Rossellini’s Europe ’51. Jude’s film sees Eszter Tompa (perhaps in her breakout role) as Orsolya, a bailiff in Cluj who suffers a crisis of ethics and guilt when she evicts a homeless man. We expect the Romanian writer-director to use his famed blended absurd-dramatic style to, once again, sharply interrogate interlocking crises of social anomie and so-called modernity.
Premieres 22:00, Wednesday 19 February, at Berlinale Palast

Hot Milk – Rebecca Lenkiewicz (UK/Greece)

(Competition)

British playwright and screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz is perhaps best known for penning the Rachel-and-Rachel-led Disobedience [+leggi anche:
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Premieres 22:00, Friday 14 February, at Berlinale Palast

Blue Moon – Richard Linklater (USA/Ireland)

(Competition)

Richard Linklater makes movies like Hit Man and Everybody Wants Some!!, and also ones like this. There’ll be nary a fake moustache, cowboy hat or doobie in sight as the Texan filmmaker reunites with his greatest muse, Ethan Hawke, here playing an ailing Lorenz Hart – once part of the legendary songwriting team Rodgers and Hart – as he drowns his sorrows in a Manhattan bar (although it was shot in Ireland) as his former partner premieres the musical Oklahoma! on Broadway, co-written with Oscar Hammerstein II. Joining Hawke are the much-liked Andrew Scott and Margaret Qualley, who hopefully can soak in this film’s particular Linklater flavour.
Premieres 19:00, Tuesday 18 February, at Berlinale Palast

Ancestral Visions of the Future – Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese (France/Lesotho/Germany/Qatar/Saudi Arabia)

(Berlinale Special)

It was a long and great festival journey for Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese’s This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection [+leggi anche:
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Premieres 18:30, Thursday 20 February, at Stage Bluemax Theater

Girls on Wire – Vivian Qu (China)

(Competition)

A star of the cutting edge of new Chinese cinema, Vivian Qu returns to the festival scene after excelling at Venice 2017 with Angels Wear White [+leggi anche:
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Premieres 15:00, Monday 17 February, at Berlinale Palast

Lurker – Alex Russell (USA/Italy)

(Berlinale Special Gala)

As another film emerging from Sundance with an impressive reception, Alex Russell’s thriller follows Matthew (a soulful-eyed Théodore Pellerin), a young man who seeks to penetrate the inner circle of rising pop superstar Oliver (Archie Madekwe, of Midsommar and Saltburn [+leggi anche:
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Premieres 18:30, Friday 21 February, at Berlinale Palast

Eighty Plus – Želimir Žilnik (Serbia/Slovenia)

(Forum)

Doyen of the 1960s Yugoslav Black Wave Želimir Žilnik is back at the festival with one of the deeper cuts in the whole line-up, a “hilarious and sneakily charming” docu-fiction, which should also have particular resonance in Berlin, where the director won the Golden Bear back in 1969 for Early Works. Stevan Arsin (Milan Kovačević) is an ex-jazz musician long resident in Germany, who learns that the Serbian state intends to give back the home expropriated from his family during World War II; then, he sets off with a researcher called Nina to his old haunts, where the new post-socialist landscape is unveiled (see the news).
Premieres 14:00, Friday 14 February, at Delphi Filmpalast