As the Berlinale celebrates its 60th anniversary, the Forum will also be looking back on four decades of film and festival work. The stories of the two events are inextricably linked, with their shared paths yielding a fascinating piece of (film) history.

The Best First Feature Award was set up by the Berlinale in 2006 in order to promote new filmmaking talent. Eight films from the Forum program have been nominated for this year’s prize.

This year, the program of the 5th Forum Expanded extends beyond film installations and curated film and video screenings, turning its attention in addition to the relationship between screen and stage in a series of nine performances. A range of panel discussions will also be devoted to the relationship between exhibitions, cinema & performance.

In its 40th year, the Berlinale Forum features a selection of films that capture the mood of the times in a sensitive way. Rarely have there been, in feature films and documentaries alike, as many people caught in insolvable conflicts, faced with essential decisions or staring into the abyss as in this year’s selection of films.

The first Forum Expanded press release wets the appetite for a programme expanding perspectives not only artistically, but also geopolitically. A topical focus will be on the return of structural cinema.

Guy Maddin's Brand Upon the Brain! from the 2007’s Forum programme is brought into the cinemas by the Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art e.V. It is on show at the Berlin cinema fsk from 17th December to 6th January.

Soundless Wind Chime from this year's Forum programme is shown at the Gay Film Night in German cinemas in December. In Berlin Bernhard Bulling, the main actor, is expected as special guest at the show on the 18th of December.

Harun Farocki's Zum Vergleich received the ARTE Documentary Award at this year's Duisburger Filmwoche, a festival for German language documentaries. The film had its world premiere at the Forum this year.

Special distribution offer celebrating Richard Serra’s 70th birthday:
Richard Serra's film and video works in a program of three scenarios for reduced rental fee

Yoav Shamir's Defamation is the winner of the Grierson Award for the best documentary at this year's London Film Festival. The documentary, which deals with contemporary discourses around anti-semitism, had its world premiere at the Forum earlier this year.