28/01/2025 - New works by Vitaly Mansky, brothers Gianluca and Massimiliano De Serio, Želimir Žilnik, Adilkhan Yerzhanov and James Benning are among this year’s entries

UPDATE (28 January 2025): The Forum section is completed by Gerd Kroske's documentary Pride & Attitude, which poses the question “What was once gained – what is lost?” through the biographies of former GDR female industrial workers.

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Today, the 75th Berlinale (13-23 February) unveiled the full programme for its Forum section. “The 55th Forum main programme comprises 30 films from five continents – including seven feature debuts – and encounters a world and its people that are in a poor state. Sounding out a diverse range of cinematic forms, the Forum shows contemporary cinema that moves beyond the cult and the commercial – giving off sparks of humanity, interrogating the status quo and functioning as a seismograph of our time,” comments section head Barbara Wurm.

As usual, a wealth of European entries comprises this year’s line-up, such as the new title by seasoned Latvian documentary filmmaker Vitaly Mansky (Putin’s Witnesses [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Vitaly Mansky
film profile]), Time to the Target, a sober look at a soldiers’ graveyard in L’viv, which stands alongside the second film in the programme about Ukraine in wartime, a tender portrait of Odesa, titled When Lightning Flashes Over the Sea, by Eva Neymann (Song of Songs [+see also:
trailer
film profile]).

Next up is Stefan Hayn’s 2024 (2023), which places the political Berlin and the private Bavaria within the two respective frames Hayn makes for himself as a painter of his surroundings: that of the film shot and that of the painting shown in it.

Meanwhile, the “different facets of the political are revealed across a broad geographical spectrum”, including the “moving, four-hour Berlin institutional study” Palliative Care Unit by Philipp Döring; “the miraculous journey into the underground world of regional Italian singing cultures” offered by Canone effimero, a documentary by brothers Gianluca and Massimiliano De Serio (Una promessa [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Gianluca and Massimiliano D…
film profile]); and the portrait of a relationship between a Gambian man and an Austrian woman depicted in Ivette Löcker’s Our Time Will Come.

“Reflecting on today by looking at the past marks a key quality of the documentary forms showing at the Forum,” states the Berlinale’s official press release. In this respect, the Peruvian-Portuguese found-footage film The Memory of Butterflies by Tatiana Fuentes Sadowski is a reconstruction of indigenous slavery and colonial crimes, and questions the director’s own family connections.

Moreover, the line-up will showcase Sirens Call [+see also:
trailer
film profile], a debut feature helmed by Lina Sieckmann and Miri Ian Gossing billed as “an artistically daring hybrid film” and “an intimate look at the work of real-life mermaids”. Further European feature debuts include Minimals in a Titanic World by Rwanda’s Philbert Aimé Mbabazi Sharangabo, Veronica Nicole Tetelbaum’s Houses [+see also:
trailer
film profile], and “the music-charged debut films” by Marie Luise Lehner and Yuri Semashko, titled If You Are Afraid You Put Your Heart into Your Mouth and Smile and The Swan Song of Fedor Ozerov, respectively.

Finally, the programme promises “a hint of optimism to be found across the whole spectrum of features, even if the individual fates they narrate are hardly easy”. These titles include Jan Eilhardt’s semi-autobiographical pic Janine Moves to the Country, Juan Daniel Fernández Molero’s hybrid film Punku, Elmar Imanov’s “tale of grief, loneliness, intimacy and new starts” The Kiss of the Grasshopper [+see also:
trailer
film profile], and Eighty Plus, courtesy of veteran filmmaker and former Golden Bear winner Želimir Žilnik. Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s “violent Kazakh genre horror plucked from real life” Cadet and a new experimental effort from US filmmaker James Benning, little boy, are also in the section’s programme.

Here is the full list of the selected titles:

Forum

little boy – James Benning (USA)
Queer as Punk – Yihwen Chen (Malaysia/Indonesia)
Canone effimero – Gianluca De Serio, Massimiliano De Serio (Italy)
Palliative Care Unit – Philipp Döring (Germany)
Janine Moves to the Country – Jan Eilhardt (Germany)
Punku – Juan Daniel Fernández Molero (Peru/Spain)
The Memory of Butterflies – Tatiana Fuentes Sadowski (Peru/Portugal)
Sirens Call [+see also:
trailer
film profile] – Miri Ian Gossing, Lina Sieckmann (Germany/Netherlands)
After Dreaming – Christine Haroutounian (USA/Armenia/Mexico)
2024 (2023) – Stefan Hayn (Germany)
Tiger's Pond – Natesh Hegde (India/Singapore)
The Trio Hall – Su Hui-yu (Taiwan)
The Kiss of the Grasshopper [+see also:
trailer
film profile] – Elmar Imanov (Germany/Luxembourg/Italy)
Holding Liat – Brandon Kramer (USA)
Pride & Attitude – Gerd Kroske (Germany)
If You Are Afraid You Put Your Heart into Your Mouth and Smile – Marie Luise Lehner (Austria)
Our Time Will Come – Ivette Löcker (Austria)
Time to the Target – Vitaly Mansky (Latvia/Czechia/Ukraine)
Minimals in a Titanic World – Philbert Aimé Mbabazi Sharangabo (Rwanda/Germany/Cameroon)
Spring Night – Kang Mi-ja (South Korea)
The Sense of Violence – Kim Mooyoung (South Korea)
When Lightning Flashes Over the Sea – Eva Neymann (Germany/Ukraine)
Underground – Kaori Oda (Japan)
Evidence – Lee Anne Schmitt (USA)
The Swan Song of Fedor Ozerov – Yuri Semashko (Lithuania)
Fwends – Sophie Somerville (Australia)
Colossal – Nayibe Tavares-Abel (Dominican Republic)
Houses [+see also:
trailer
film profile] – Veronica Nicole Tetelbaum (Israel/Germany)
Cadet – Adilkhan Yerzhanov (Kazakhstan)
What's Next? – Cao Yiwen (Hong Kong/China)
Eighty Plus – Želimir Žilnik (Serbia/Slovenia)

Forum Special

Nudity - Sabina Bakaeva (Uzbekistan/France) (short film)
Iracema - Jorge Bodanzky, Orlando Senna (Brazil/Federal Republic of Germany) (1975)
Scars of a Putsch - Nathalie Borgers (Austria/Belgium)
Inner Blooming Springs - Tiku Kobiashvili (Georgia) (medium-length film)
The Long Road to the Director's Chair - Vibeke Løkkeberg (Norway)
The Lie - Katrin Seybold (Federal Republic of Germany) (1987)
My Armenian Phantoms - Tamara Stepanyan (France/Armenia/Qatar)
Fruit Farm - Nana Xu (Germany/China) (medium-length film)