Big changes are coming for Berlinale Forum: Cristina Nord is leaving as the Forum head, Barbara Wurm is taking over. In our podcast we are talking to the two of them together about what is special about the Berlinale Forum and where it is heading, but also looking back on four exciting and challenging years.

As of August 1, 2023, the author and curator Barbara Wurm will be taking over as head of the Forum section, which has been part of the Berlinale since 1971 and is independently curated and run by Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art. Wurm succeeds Cristina Nord, who is returning to the Goethe-Institut after four years. Anna Hoffmann will provide support as the section and program manager. Uli Ziemons and Ala Younis will continue to be responsible for Forum Expanded.

The juries of CICAE and FIPRESCI as well as the Ecumenical jury have awarded films from the Forum.

DE FACTO by Selma Doborac is awarded the Caligari Prize 2023. The jury states: "an extraordinary and highly intense film that, like hardly any other before it, makes us think philosophically about destructive (group) dynamics and the inhuman in human beings".

From June 8-15, 2023, the festival Archival Assembly #2 considers international film archives as a shape-shifting space for the future of cinema. The biannual festival reflects critically on the topic of cinematic heritage and features new restorations, contemporary films, transnational archive projects, an exhibition and a symposium.

Forum and Forum Expanded appeal for donations in support of organisations that provide humanitarian aid in Turkey, Syria and Kurdistan after the devastating earthquake.

The Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art is planning to move into new premises in the silent green Kulturquartier in 2025. 

There were a number of different reasons for the naming of Kino Arsenal in 1970. One of them was the allusion to the silent film by the Ukrainian director Oleksandr Dovzhenko from 1929. We asked the author and film critic Bert Rebhandl to look at the film again from today's perspective. The result is a comprehensive research and re-examination.