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BERLINALE 2026

The 76th Berlinale announces its jury members

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- Wim Wenders, Min Bahadur Bham, Bae Doona, Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, Reinaldo Marcus Green, HIKARI and Ewa Puszczyńska are to serve on the Golden Bear competition jury

The 76th Berlinale announces its jury members
Clockwise from left: Wim Wenders (© Gerhard Kassner), Reinaldo Marcus Green (© Ema P Hershman), Bae Doona (© Mok Jung Wook), Shivendra Singh Dungarpur (© Sunhil Sippy), HIKARI (© Corey Nickoles), Min Bahadur Bham (© Angad Dhakal) and Ewa Puszczyńska (© WBD/Agnieszka K Jurek)

As every year, a multitalented international jury will decide who will take home the Golden and Silver Bears from the Berlinale. At the upcoming 76th edition (12-22 February), 22 films selected for the competition will be vying for the awards, including the Golden Bear for Best Film and the aforementioned Silver Bears. The winners will be announced at the Berlinale Palast on 21 February.

Director, writer and photographer Wim Wenders will preside over the international jury (see the news). One of the most significant figures of New German Cinema, Wenders has remained closely connected to the Berlinale for decades and was given the Honorary Golden Bear in 2015.

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Joining him on the jury are Nepali director and producer Min Bahadur Bham, a key figure in Nepal’s “New Wave” cinema, whose Shambhala [+see also:
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competed for the Golden Bear in 2024; South Korean star actress Bae Doona, known for her work with Bong Joon-ho, Park Chan-wook and Hirokazu Kore-eda as well as international projects such as Cloud Atlas [+see also:
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and Sense8; Indian director, producer and archivist Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, founder of the Film Heritage Foundation and a leading voice in film preservation; US filmmaker Reinaldo Marcus Green, whose work includes Monsters and Men, King Richard and Bob Marley: One Love; Japanese director, writer and producer HIKARI, whose Berlinale Panorama hit 37 Seconds won the Audience Award in 2019; and Polish producer Ewa Puszczyńska, whose credits range from Ida [+see also:
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interview: Pawel Pawlikowski
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and Cold War [+see also:
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Q&A: Pawel Pawlikowski
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to The Zone of Interest [+see also:
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.

As for the Perspectives section, dedicated to debut features, a three-member jury will hand out the GWFF Best First Feature Award, endowed with €50,000 and split between the director and producer of the winning film. The jury is composed of Moroccan filmmaker Sofia Alaoui (Animalia [+see also:
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interview: Sofia Alaoui
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]
), German writer-director Frédéric Hambalek (What Marielle Knows [+see also:
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]
), and Polish-Canadian curator and newly appointed New Horizons festival director Dorota Lech. The award will be presented during the official awards ceremony on 21 February.

The international short-film jury for Berlinale Shorts will be made up of Syrian director Ameer Fakher Eldin (Yunan [+see also:
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), Austrian cultural journalist and film critic Stefan Grissemann, and German artist and author Gabriele Stötzer. From among the 21 nominated shorts, they will select the winners of the Golden Bear for Best Short Film, the Silver Bear Jury Prize (Short Film), the Berlin Short Film Candidate for the European Film Awards and the Berlinale Shorts CUPRA Filmmaker Award, endowed with €20,000.

The Berlinale Documentary Award will be granted to one of the 16 nominated documentaries across the Competition, Berlinale Special, Panorama, Forum and Generation sections. The three-member jury includes Berlin-based filmmaker and visual artist Lemohang Mosese (This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection [+see also:
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); US scholar and critic B Ruby Rich, a key figure in feminist and queer film theory; and Indian documentarian Shaunak Sen (All That Breathes [+see also:
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interview: Shaunak Sen
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). The award comes with prize money of €40,000, shared between the director and producer.

Lastly, the Generation section has also announced its juries. The Generation international jury consists of Indonesian filmmaker Khozy Rizal, US programmer Kim Yutani and German actress Lena Urzendowsky. They will award the Grand Prix for Best Film and the Special Prize for Best Short Film in the Kplus and 14plus competitions. In parallel, a children’s jury and a youth jury will decide on the Crystal Bear winners in their respective sections, continuing the Berlinale’s long-standing commitment to young audiences and emerging voices.

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