Berlin 2025

In 2024 (2023) painter Stefan Hayn takes us on a journey inside his head. Through his paintings and through his cell phone recordings/musings he shows us how he sees the world. The film is a study in patience and attention, and even though Hayn's own comments or reflections are rare, it also offers a genuine sense of intimacy.

A delightful feel-good movie about a circus family, filmed over the course of a year, as seen through the eyes of 11-year-old Santino, a boy who is yet to discover his special talent. Throughout, Circusboy manages to strike a delicate balance between reality and enchantment, and just like the circus itself it is an immersive and fun experience that makes you feel like you are part of a beautiful, different reality.

In their short film world-premiering at Berlinale 2025, Daniel Azadi Faezi and Mila Zhluktenko find links between the construction of Munich’s Olympic shopping mall, a horrific racist attack that was perpetrated there half a century later, and a little-seen (but soon to be restored) protest film by Sohrab Shahid Saless, Iranian by birth but considered part of the German New Wave of the 1970s and 80s. The directors talk to BDE about their own film’s contemporary relevance.

A gentle and heart-warmingly non-judgmental film, Denis Côté’s Paul is a compassionate observation of a shy and unusual man and the life of subservience he chooses to lead. While the subject matter could have been treated salaciously or shot for laughs, in the hands of the experienced and wise Côté it is an intelligent examination of an eccentric but endearing human being.

It’s the worst form of mental torture you can imagine - your child held hostage and very little you can do to free her. This was the predicament of the parents of Liat Beinin Atzili, kidnapped by Hamas on October 7 2023 along with her husband, Aviv. The story of how Yehuda and Chaya coped, and how they worked tirelessly to liberate their daughter, is told in Brandon Kramer’s feature documentary Holding Liat, a world premiere February 16 in Berlin. The director talks to BDE.

Irish outfit Silver Mountain Distribution is embracing documentary in earnest. The company, which is the sales and marketing arm of Carey Fitzgerald’s Silver Mountain Productions, is at the European Film Market in Berlin with three new feature docs on its slate. “We only work on creative documentaries. One of our aims is also to work on stories of the under-represented,” Fitzgerald explains why Silver Mountain is muscling into the doc sales arena.

As a member of Palestine’s first parkour team, the energetic Ahmed free-runs through the battered buildings of Gaza pre-October 7, 2023. His goal is to create parkour videos that are so impressive that they could be his ticket out. In the meantime, he strikes up an unlikely online friendship with wistful Palestinian-American émigré director Areeb Zuaiter.

The moving and prescient The Moelln Letters (Die Möllner Briefe) shines a light on a dark episode from Germany’s past when, in November 1992, the city of Moelln witnessed the first racist attack within a reunified Germany, with three people killed by arsonists, devastating the lives of İbrahim Arslan and his family.

In her new feature doc, world-premiering in Berlin, Luzia Schmid profiles the extraordinary German actress, singer, author and femme fatale Hildegard Knef, a woman of immense contradictions, but who, despite having worked with the greatest movie directors of the era such as Billy Wilder to Carol Reed, made few truly memorable films. “I instantly fell in love with her because I felt that nobody in Germany would talk so freely and so charmingly about things not working out well,” says director Schmid.

Vibeke Løkkeberg’s feature doc, about the inaugural International Women’s Film Seminar in Berlin (1973), is set to become a multi-part TV series, announced Norwegian producer Anders Tangen of Viafilm February 14. The film opens this year’s Berlinale Forum (also Feb 14) where it is presents as a world premiere. “We still sit on a gold mine of material that we can use for a multi-part series of 30-minute episodes with different accents, allowing us to dig deeper and shine light on other topics,” says Tangen.