Berlin 2025

Lviv in western Ukraine was Vitaly Mansky’s home town, before he left as a young man to study film in Moscow. When filming his Ukrainian protagonists, some of whom were gravediggers and members of a brass band who play at funerals, Mansky was wary how families who had lost their loved ones at the hands of the Russian army might react toward him. After a funeral, one of the fathers came up to him. He was frightened about what the man might do, but in the end the father thanked him “for being on our side.”

In her new feature documentary Only on Earth (premiering in Berlin’s Generation Kplus and sold by Autlook), Danish director Robin Petré isn’t observing the wildfires in southern Galicia from a safe distance, zooming in with telephoto lenses. Not a bit of it - rather, she is at the heart of the inferno. “We are actually inside those fires,” the director extinguishes any idea that she and her team were staying back as the heat rose. She explains more to BDE.

It may have been shunned by Norwegian television executives (male) back in the 1970s and subsequently shelved for nigh on 50 years, but Vibeke Løkkeberg’s chronicle of the first International Women’s Film Seminar at Arsenal Cinema in Berlin, in 1973, still packs a political punch in offering up a timeless reflection on gender equality (or lack thereof) and representation. The director explains all to Business Doc Europe.

Business Doc Europe caught up with Paula Ossandón Cabrera, Director of Chiledoc. During our chat we zoomed in on a recent survey published by the body highlighting the Southern American country’s thriving non-fiction scene, areas for improvement, co-productions, nurturing talents and, of course, Chile’s presence at this year’s Berlinale and EFM.

Berlin-based Irish filmmaker Feargal Ward discusses his new short film, world-premiering in Berlin. Tin City was a fake town where, some 30 or 40 years ago, the British army played out war-game scenarios against the IRA, as represented by plastic mannequins and 2D cut-outs. “The crucial thing for me was the idea of a war taking place between two entities (the IRA and the British army), but on a third site, not in Britain, not in Ireland, but transplanted to north-west Germany,” says director Ward.

When Tamara Stepanyan’s father, the renowned Armenian stage and screen actor Vigen Stepanyan, died aged 68 in 2021, she felt an overwhelming sense of bereavement. “This was a big trauma because it was really a very unexpected death. He died very fast and sudden,” the Armenian director recalls to Business Doc Europe. “I had this desire, a very profound one, to continue the discussion with him.”

Documentary is once more in the ascendant at Berlinale with more than 50 non-fiction films in official selection and a reinstated Doc Salon programme (14-18 February) at EFM, during which networking and knowledge-sharing will be placed centre-stage. “There was a missing link because Doc Salon had happened until the pandemic, but then it hadn't been reinstated after the pandemic,” says new Berlinale Pro chief Tanja Meissner. “So there was a real gap for these people to meet, to mingle and to network because, as you know, networking is the biggest asset in our industry.”

More than 50 documentaries are selected for Berlinale 2025 across the festival’s Competition, Berlinale Special, Panorama, Generation, Berlinale Classics, Shorts, Forum and Forum Expanded sections. Timestamp by Kateryna Gornostai is the sole doc screening in Competition, while Forum/Forum Expanded and Panorama sections present 23 and 10 documentaries respectively. The 75th Berlinale runs February 13-23.

Oleksiy Radynski’s feature documentary, world-premiering in Berlin, chronicles hapless members of the invading Russian army after they have entered Ukraine’s notorious Chernobyl nuclear facility. “What you see in the film is that the much-feared Russian army that had this image as an unstoppable and ruthless force is actually extremely incompetent and ridiculous, in a way unprofessional - deeply dysfunctional also,” Radynski tells BDE.

The leading sales outfit will handle world sales on Tamara Stepanyan’s new feature doc, a co-production between Armenia and France, and set to world premiere February 16. My Armenian Phantoms is described as an evocative journey through the forgotten world of Armenian cinema and its legacy. “The film celebrates a cultural legacy which has unfortunately long been overshadowed and we cannot wait for the audience to experience the power of this cinema,” says Suzanne Nodale, Cinephil co-Managing Director.