Documentaries in selection at 75th Berlinale

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 75^th Berlinale runs February 13-23.

COMPETITION

• Strichka chasu/Timestamp by Kateryna Gornostai. Ukraine / Luxembourg / Netherlands / France. 2025 World premiere. Despite the war, school life continues in Ukraine, with pupils and teachers striving to carry on learning even under constant threat. The film is a mosaic of the everyday lives of teachers and students from different corners of Ukraine.

BERLINALE SPECIAL

• Ancestral Visions of the Future by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese. France / Lesotho / Germany / Qatar / Saudi Arabia. 2025. World premiere. A poetic allegory of the filmmaker Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese’s childhood, an ode to cinema and an inner nod to his mother. Through fragmented narratives and mythic imagery, Mosese crafts a haunting reflection on dislocation and belonging.
• Das Deutsche Volk by Marcin Wierzchowski. Germany 2025 World premiere. Debut film. The film tells the story of the victims’ relatives and the survivors of the racist attack in Hanau in 2020, in which nine young people were murdered because the perpetrator did not consider them to be German.
• A Letter to David by Tom Shoval. Israel / USA. 2025. World premiere. Ten years ago, David Cunio starred in Tom Shoval’s debut feature film Youth, which revolved around a kidnapping. On October 7, 2023, Cunio was taken from the Nir Oz kibbutz and has been held hostage in Gaza ever since. Now, Shoval sends him a cinematic letter.
• My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow by Julia Loktev.  USA. 2024. International premiere. What begins as an intimate portrait of Russian independent journalists facing persecution by Putin’s regime takes a drastic turn when Russia starts a full-scale war in Ukraine and they are all forced into exile.

PANORAMA

• Bajo las banderas, el sol Under the Flags, the Sun by Juanjo Pereira. Paraguay / Argentina / USA / France / Germany. 2025. World premiere. Debut film. This fully archival journey through the 35 years of Alfredo Stroessner’s regime in Paraguay reveals unseen footage and explores one of the longest-running dictatorships in history, whose effects still resonate today.
• Bedrock by Kinga Michalska. Canada. 2025. World premiere. Debut film. Bedrock is a psychological journey across today’s Poland that weaves together stories of Poles living on Holocaust sites. Through a series of intimate encounters, this poetic film looks at the unsettling contradictions with which people learn to live.
• Ich will alles. Hildegard Knef by Luzia Schmid. Germany 2025. World premiere. Hildegard Knef achieved worldwide success, overcame crushing defeats and always maintained her dignity. A portrait of a unique artist and remarkable woman, told via archive footage from six decades.
• Khartoum by Anas Saeed, Rawia Alhag, Ibrahim Snoopy, Timeea M Ahmed, Phil Cox. Sudan / United Kingdom / Germany / Qatar. 2025.European premiere. Five lives, one city, the fate of a nation. A civil servant, a tea lady, a resistance committee volunteer and two street boys are forced to flee when civil war breaks out in Sudan. An emotional and lyrical portrait of five people from Khartoum.
• Listy z Wilczej Letters from Wolf Street by Arjun Talwar. Poland / Germany. 2025. World premiere. A central Warsaw street becomes a kaleidoscope of Polish society. Behind the camera is an Indian migrant who is seeking to overcome the distance between himself and a country full of contradictions and anxieties.
• The Moelln Letters by Martina Priessner. Germany. 2025. World premiere. Thirty years after the racist attacks in Mölln, survivor İbrahim Arslan discovers hundreds of forgotten letters of solidarity. The film follows him and his family in their struggle to foster a new, victim-centred culture of remembrance.
• Monk in Pieces by Billy Shebar.USA / Germany / France. 2025. World premiere. Visionary composer and performer Meredith Monk overcame hostile critics to become one of the great artists of her time. In her seventh decade of creativity, she ponders how her unique work can continue without her.
• Paul by Denis Côté. Canada. 2025. World premiere. Struggling with depression and social anxiety, Paul has found refuge in serving women who invite him to clean their homes. By sharing his gently eccentric routines on social media, he combats loneliness and takes it one day at a time.
• Satanische Sau/The Satanic Sow by Rosa von Praunheim. Germany. 2025 World premiere. Rosa von Praunheim is the satanic sow, incarnated by the wanton actor Armin Dallapiccola. A poetic compendium of life and death with pushy fans, the Good Lord, lovers and Rosa’s horrified mother.
• Yalla Parkour by Areeb Zuaiter. Sweden / Qatar / Saudi Arabia / Palestine. 2024. European premiere. Debut film. In pursuit of a memory that reinforces her sense of belonging, Areeb crosses paths with Ahmed, a parkour athlete in Gaza, sparking a journey where conflicting aspirations clash. Nostalgia meets ambition, the weight of the past meets an unpredictable future.

GENERATION

• Sunset over America by Matías Rojas Valencia. Brazil / Chile / Colombia. 2025. World premiere. Documentary form. Short Film. The Altiplano plateau is one of the most dangerous migration routes in Latin America. A teenager recalls the night she crossed the plateau and the feeling of being accompanied by a spiritual presence that wanders like the wind. (Generation 14plus)
• Beneath Which Rivers Flow by Ali Yahya. Iraq. 2025 World premiere. Short Film. In the marshlands of southern Iraq, Ibrahim feels like a stranger in the world. His sole companion is his faithful buffalo. But a looming environmental catastrophe threatens the only life he knows and the one living being he truly understands. (Generation 14plus)
• El paso/The Leap by Roberto Tarazona. Cuba. 2025 World premiere. Short Film. Two children set out to decipher the mystery of events that the adults only talk about in secret: in the darkness of the moonless nights, cattle are disappearing along with the farmers who dare to confront the “monster” that is taking them. Generation Kplus
• Hora do recreio/Playtime by Lucia Murat.Brazil. 2025. World premiere. Brazil from the perspective of students aged 14 to 19. Combining a documentary with a fictional approach, Hora do recreio addresses topics such as violence, racism and drug dealing. (Generation 14plus)
• Only on Earth by Robin Petré. Denmark / Spain. 2025. World premiere. A visually stunning journey into southern Galicia, one of the most wildfire-prone zones in Europe, where humans and animals alike are struggling to cope with the hottest, driest summer on record. (Generation Kplus)
• Ornmol/White Ochre by Marlikka Perdrisat. Australia. 2025. International premiere. Short Film. Kupungarri in northwestern Australia is one of the most natural places left in the world. The small community strengthens its young people through a close connection with Country. Excitement grows as they prepare for the biggest event of the year, the Mowanjum Festival. (Generation Kplus)
• Zirkuskind/Circusboy by Julia Lemke, Anna Koch. Germany. 2025. World premiere. Santino is a circus kid. He travels round the country with his family and animals, and is here today, there tomorrow. His great-grandfather tells him stories from the past. As the old man looks back on his life, Santino’s is just beginning. (Generation Kplus)

FORUM

• 2024 (2023) by Stefan Hayn. Germany.2025. World premiere. Twofold mise-en-scène. Views of a city and a family. Political Berlin, private Franconia. Painting within the film image. Realities observed within a necessarily shifting frame. A mobile phone film with the potential for deceleration. A social medium.
• Canone effimero by Gianluca De Serio, Massimiliano De Serio. Italy. 2025. World premiere. Moving through Italy’s regions, the De Serio brothers come across an alternative popular culture and shoot a rectangular film about polyvocal songs, music ethnology and oral tradition. Radically contemporary, energetic, close to nature, local. Lyrical.
• Chas pidlotu/Time to the Target Chas pidlotu by Vitaly Mansky. Latvia / Czechia / Ukraine. 2025. World premiere. Spring, summer, autumn, winter… still war in Lviv, western Ukraine. Torn between normality and a state of emergency. For one year, Mansky follows the life cycle of a society’s grieving rites and everyday rituals, where death is the order of the day.
• Colossal by Nayibe Tavares-Abel. Dominican Republic. 2025. World premiere. Debut film. Genealogy, uncomfortable questions and reams of archival material are Tavares-Abel’s tools in discovering the political truths of her family and the Dominican Republic. Election fraud and dictatorship are frighteningly topical. Activism suggests itself.
• Evidence by Lee Anne Schmitt. USA. 2025. World premiere. Taking her dad’s job at the Olin Corporation as a starting point, Lee Anne Schmitt interweaves meditative reflections on her biography and her own body with a history of the rise and widespread influence of conservative think tanks in the United States.
• Das falsche Wort/The Lie by Katrin Seybold, Melanie Spitta. Federal Republic of Germany 1987. World premiere of the digital restoration. As the child of survivors of the Sinti persecution by the Nazis, Melanie Spitta holds the “thread of the truth” in this film. “Reparations” – a lie! “The courts believed the perpetrators, not us.” Shock, evidence, warning, accusation. (Forum Special)
• Guochang/Fruit Farm by Nana Xu | with Mu Luoyuan, Gao Zijun, Wang Wentong, Nana Xu. Germany / People’s Republic of China. 2025 World premiere. Nana Xu travels to the place built by her father as a prisoner during the Cultural Revolution: first a work camp, later a prison, fruit farm and treatment centre. Conversations with last remaining witnesses, where home is still shaped by a repressed past. (Forum Special)
• Holding Liat by Brandon Kramer. USA. 2025. World premiere Liat is one of the hostages taken on October 7. The film follows her relatives from right up close, with a focus on her father, as he tries to stay on the path of pacifism and humanity amidst war, trauma and diplomacy.
• little boy by James Benning.USA 2025. World premiere. A film looking at the past to warn about the future, from a little boy’s point of view. A companion piece to American Dreams (lost and found) (1984).
• The Long Road to the Director’s Chair by Vibeke Løkkeberg. NorwaY. 2025. World premiere. In 1973, Vibeke Løkkeberg filmed the beginnings of the feminist film movement at the First International Women’s Film Seminar, held at the Arsenal cinema. Her footage was lost for 50 years. Today, it confronts us with past battles still yet to be won. (Forum Special)
• La memoria de las mariposas/The Memory of Butterflies by Tatiana Fuentes Sadowski. Peru / Portugal 2025. World premiere. Debut film. Emerging from the shadows of the rubber trade, the lost stories of Omarino and Aredomi are revealed. A journey through Amazonian archives connects research, speculation and the filmmaker’s own family history, invoking a dialogue between the living and the dead.
• My Armenian Phantoms by Tamara Stepanyan. France / Armenia / Qatar. 2025 World premiere. A tender posthumous letter to Tamara’s father, who was a film actor in Soviet Armenia. She already watched him on TV as a child before later establishing herself as a filmmaker. A captivating sleepwalk through the landscapes of Armenian film history. (Forum Special)
• Nagota/Nudity by Sabina Bakaeva. Uzbekistan / France. 2025. World premiere. A piercingly open talk between a mother and a daughter about growing up as a woman in Uzbekistan, now and back then. Confessions about sex no one really wanted, about the experience of misogyny and gender asymmetry. Naked truths as a form of therapy. (Forum Special)
• Palliative Care Unit by Philipp Döring. Germany. 2025 World premiere. Debut film. Life only ends with the final heartbeat. The palliative care unit at Berlin’s Franziskus hospital. For one summer, Philipp Döring documents conversations driven by humanity, institutional bottlenecks and the light that streams in despite everything.
• Queer as Punk by Yihwen Chen. Malaysia / Indonesia. 2025 World premiere Being LGBT is criminalised in Muslim-majority Malaysia. Trans man Faris and his punk band still travel the country playing gigs and protesting on the streets. A documentary portrait of courageous people, humorous friendship and the spirit of punk.

FORUM EXPANDED

• Akher Youm/The Last Day by Mahmoud Ibrahim. Egypt. 2024. European premiere. Brothers Ziad and Moody spend their last day in their family home, which is scheduled for demolition. As they move furniture outside, Moody turns on the TV to pass the time, and they hear news about the demolition of Palestinian homes in Jerusalem.
• Al Basateen/The Orchards by Antoine Chapon. France. 2025. World premiere. In 2015, in Damascus, the Basateen al-Razi district and its orchards were razed to the ground as punishment for the population’s uprising against the regime. Having lost everything, two former residents recall their neighborhood.
• Mikuba/Cobalt by Petna Ndaliko Katondolo. Democratic Republic of the Congo. Mikuba takes us to the cobalt veins of Kolwezi, where the battle for a green energy future is fought in dust and heat. As Mama Leonece navigates the labyrinth of multinational giants, she faces a harsh reality that guides her towards ancestral wisdom.
• Mua besoj më shpëtoj portreti/I believe the portrait saved me by Alban Muja. Kosovo / Netherlands. 2025. World premiere. Twenty-five years after his abduction during the Kosovo War, painter Skender Muja recalls a pivotal moment of survival. Held in a detention center, he was ordered to draw a Serbian commander’s portrait to save his life.
• Photosynthesizing Dead in Warehouse by Jeamin Cha. South Korea. 2024. International premiere. In a vacant house, scenes of decaying fruit in a box are interspersed with correspondence from a researcher studying the kusōzu, Buddhist paintings that depict the nine stages of a decaying corpse, associated with the practice of realizing impermanence.
• Special Operation by Oleksiy Radynski. Ukraine / Lithuania. 2025. World premiere. When the Russian troops occupied Ukraine’s Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, their activities were documented by CCTV cameras. Spetsialna Operatsiia is based on that footage, recorded at the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history.
• Tin City by Feargal Ward. Ireland. 2024. World premiere. In a remote forest in northwest Germany, an urban combat facility called “Tin City” is used to train British soldiers before deployment in Northern Ireland. A bar, a bank, a shop – each location reveals another iteration of the same macabre set-up.
• Zizi (ou oração da jaca fabulosa) Zizi (or Praying to a Fabulous Tree) by Felipe M. Bragança. Brazil. 2025. World premiere. Documentary and staged scenes mix in this very personal story of a family in the suburbs of Rio, through the memories of a backyard, a giant tree, and the woman who planted it.

BERLINALE CLASSICS

• Vestida de azul/Dressed in Blue by Antonio Giménez. Spain. 1983. World premiere of the digitally restored version. Documentary form about six trans women and their lives in 1980s Madrid. They speak frankly about their experiences as performers and prostitutes, facing marginalisation and the repressive laws that endured even after the end of the Franco era.

BERLINALE SHORTS

• Dar band/Citizen-Inmate by Hesam Eslami. Iran. 2025. World premiere. The electronic monitoring has transformed Tehran into a digital panopticon, turning the nightmare of constant surveillance and control into reality. But what happens when the roles are reversed and the focus is turned on the surveillants?
• Koki, Ciao by Quenton Miller. Netherlands. 2025. International premiere. In his autobiography, Koki, the famous talking cockatoo, gives insights into his life with Tito, the long-time president of Yugoslavia whose country residence was regularly frequented by political figures, dictators and movie stars.
• Lloyd Wong, Unfinished by Lesley Loksi Chan. Canada. 2025. World premiere. In the 1990s, Chinese-Canadian artist Lloyd Wong began a video work about his living with HIV. It remained unfinished. Thirty years after his death, filmmaker Lesley Loksi Chan discovers and edits the material.
• Prekid vatre/Ceasefire by Jakob Krese. Germany / Italy / Slovenia. 2025. World premiere. Hazira survived Srebrenica. She saw the war, it corroded her life. She has been stuck in a refugee camp in her own country for 29 years, working hard and unceasingly to make ends meet and keep the trauma at bay.
• Rückblickend betrachtet/In Retrospect by Daniel Asadi Faezi, Mila Zhluktenko. Germany. 2025. World premiere. Migrant workers are building a shopping mall for the 1972 Munich Olympics. In 2016, this same place becomes the site of a racist shooting. “And now all this hatred,” remarks a woman in Addressee Unknown (1983). An attempt at looking back and finding connections.
• Their Eyes by Nicolas Gourault. France. 2025. World premiere. Clickworkers in Venezuela, Kenya and the Philippines talk about their working day: they edit and label countless images of traffic on US streets to be used as training material for self-driving cars.
• Three Stones for Jean Genet by Frieder Schlaich. Germany. 2014. No premiere. Tangier, Patti Smith, Jean Genet, three stones, a secret, a glance. Their lives collide in this city. In the end, the stones will find their place and life will go on. (Berlinale Shorts Special Programme)