2025 Berlinale Preview: 10 Titles to Look Forward To
Foremost Film
The 75th Berlin Film Festival is just a few days away, scheduled to take place February 13-23 across Germany’s bustling capital city.
This year’s Berlinale marks a significant change in festival leadership. Tricia Tuttle has been the festival’s director since April 2024. She previously served as director for the BFI London Film Festival and BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival. Hoping to leave behind the political and creative scandal of the 2024 Berlinale, Tuttle has spoken publicly about bringing back a sense of glamor and prestige to Potsdamer Platz, the festival's epicenter.
This year’s Berlinale will feature a competition jury presided over by American filmmaker Todd Haynes, with exciting new titles set to premiere from the likes of Bong Joon Ho, Richard Linklater, and Radu Jude. As the world’s largest public film festival, Berlinale always flaunts a diverse variety of programming across its many sections, typically showcasing challenging yet compelling works from across the globe. Continue reading to check out ten of the titles Foremost Film is most excited to see at this year’s Berlinale:
‘Ancestral Visions of the Future’
Director: Lemohang Mosese
Berlinale Special
Agat Films - Mokoari Street Media
Having served on last year’s Berlinale Shorts jury, Mosese returns to the festival once again with his newest work, Ancestral Visions of the Future. Born in the South African country of Lesotho, Mosese’s latest is a documentary ode to his hometown and to his mother, a continuation of the deeply personal work that has come to define his career as an artist. Through a uniquely allegorical approach, the film aims to link with the director’s own conceptions of memory, loss, and the struggle to belong.
'Ato noturno (Night Stage)'
Directors: Marcio Reolon and Filipe Matzembacher
Panorama
Avante Films, Vulcana Cinema
Brazilian filmmaking duo Reolon and Matzembacher are no strangers to the Berlinale, having won the Teddy Award for their last feature, 2018’s Hard Paint. Night Stage marks their latest collaboration, revisiting the same fascination with queer desire denoted in all of their work. The film centers around a young actor and an aspiring politician who begin a secret affair, both stimulated by having sex in public places and running the risk of being recognized as they become more prominent in their respective lines of work. In the movie’s teaser trailer, splashes of film noir intermingle with an inclination for alluring neon lighting, all setting the scene for the sexual liberation seemingly at the film’s core. Night Stage appears primed to work as a sexy, seedy addition to this year’s Panorama lineup.
‘Cadet’
Director: Adilkhan Yerzhanov
Forum
Cadet
Kazakh filmmaker Yerzhanov’s latest work excavates the grim atrocities born out of a military school in his home country, combining fiction and genre elements to critique the systems at play that keep such places in operation. The eponymous cadet is Serik, a shy young boy who enrolls at the military school thanks to his father’s connections. As Serik struggles to fit into his new surroundings, a student mysteriously dies, allowing a storm of chaos and distrust to develop over a place supposedly dedicated to education.
‘Dreams’
Director: Michel Franco
Competition
Teorema
Franco has become one of the rare filmmakers whose work has become more prolific in a post-pandemic world, having released four films (including Dreams) since 2020. After the muted release of the incredible but twisted Memory in 2023, Franco reunited with Jessica Chastain to lead the cast of Dreams, which also stars dancer-turned-actor Isaac Hernández and Rupert Friend. Shot with a wavier during the SAG-AFTRA strikes, the film focuses on a ballet dancer from Mexico who believes the keys to his destiny lie with his well-to-do American lover in the United States, only to find himself shut out of the high society world she has created for herself. Franco’s intricate storytelling and Chastain’s talent will surely make for a big awards contender in Berlinale’s competition section this year.
‘Hot Milk’
Director: Rebecca Lenkiewicz
Competition
Nikos Nikolopoulos / MUBI
Already well known for her career as a playwright and screenwriter –– penning such films as Ida, Disobedience, and She Said –– Lenkiewicz’s directorial debut Hot Milk is one of our most-anticipated of the Berlinale’s Competition lineup this year. An adaptation of Deborah Levy’s 2016 novel of the same name, Hot Milk stars Fiona Shaw and Emma Mackey as Rose and Sofia, a close mother and daughter who travel to the coast of Spain for the advice of a healer to cure Rose’s mysterious illness. When Sofia is enticed by Ingrid, a carefree traveler played by Vicky Krieps, their mother/daughter connection is challenged by Sofia’s newfound freedom. From her onscreen work to date, Lenkiewicz’s knack for building engaging female-focused narratives builds lofty expectations for her first directorial endeavor.
‘Kontinental ‘25’
Director: Radu Jude
Competition
Raluca Munteanu
After taking home the Golden Bear with Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn back in 2021, Jude returns to the Berlinale competition once more with Kontinental ’25. Loosely inspired by Roberto Rossellini’s Europa ’51, Kontinental ’25 marks another inward look at his home country of Romania for Jude and the contemporary issues that permeate its culture and communities. Shot on a shoe-string budget with a mix of dark humor and drama, Kontinental ’25 revolves around a Transylvanian bureaucrat unable to parse through her feelings of guilt after driving a homeless man from his makeshift shelter, driving him to commit suicide. Always incorporating an eclectic mix of cultural references and his specifically caustic brand of comedy, Jude’s recent work has come to define him as one of Europe’s most compelling filmmakers.
‘Mickey 17’
Director: Bong Joon Ho
Berlinale Special Gala
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc
Undoubtedly the most anticipated, high-profile premiere at this year’s Berlinale, audiences have long awaited Mickey 17 since its announcement back in early 2022. Bong’s first film since Parasite took the world by storm in 2019 and 2020 –– the first and only international film to EVER win Best Picture at the Academy Awards –– Mickey 17 appears to take place in a dystopian future where space exploration has (further) transformed into a watering hole for venture capitalists. According to the film’s logline, “The unlikely hero, Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson), 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.” Returning to Bong’s penchant for international ensemble casts, the film co-stars the likes of Steven Yeun, Naomi Ackie, Toni Collette, and Mark Ruffalo. Mickey 17 definitely looks more akin to the science-fiction worlds of Snowpiercer or Okja, so we are very eager to see how this one will land with audiences post-Parasite.
‘O último azul (The Blue Trail)’
Director: Gabriel Mascaro
Competition
Guillermo Garza / Desvia
Despite the rapturous critical praise he has received with works including Neon Bull and Divine Love, Mascaro remains an under-the-radar filmmaker fully deserving of better hype. His newest work that will premiere in competition at Berlin is The Blue Trail, set in an alternate version of Brazil where the elderly are sent off to a distant colony when their working years are over and they can no longer contribute to economic growth. The film’s central character is a 77-year-old named Teresa, who chooses to evade this regulation and journey through the Amazon on her own chosen path forward. Mascaro’s work to date has been marked by a sincere understanding of spiritual autonomy and brilliant longing, emboldened by performances grounded in reality, concepts likely to resurface in The Blue Trail.
‘Spetsialna Operatsiia (Special Operation)’
Director: Oleksiy Radynski
Forum Expanded
Oleksiy Radynski
Comprised of CCTV footage, Special Operation documents the earliest hours of Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine, as captured through footage taken from the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant on February 24, 2022. With footage spanning five weeks after the beginning of the invasion, Special Operation seems poised to draw connections between the two unprecedented disasters, which have shaped the contemporary world with their unique connotations of devastation. Special Operation will be featured in the festival’s Forum Expanded section, which platforms high-concept work that challenges the conventions of cinema.
‘Uiksaringitara (Wrong Husband)’
Director: Zacharias Kunuk
Generation 14plus
Kingulliit Productions
Best known among cinephiles for his 2001 breakout feature, Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, Kunuk has since become one of the world’s most celebrated Indigenous filmmakers. His latest, Wrong Husband, is an Inuk tale of desperate young lovers torn apart in the far-distant past of the Canadian Arctic. An Inuk interpretation of a familiar, fairy tale-esque narrative, Wrong Husband promises to incorporate its own uniquely Indigenous craft and soul through Kunuk’s sensibilities and working style.