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.

Festival: June 8 to 15, 2023
Exhibition: June 8 to July 2, 2023
At Arsenal Cinema, silent green Kulturquartier, SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA

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".

Assem Hendawi’s Film SIMIA: STRATAGEM FOR UNDESTINING in this year’s Forum Expanded programme uses a speculative AI to think about alternative futures. In our podcast we talked to him about robots telling dad jokes and why Samuel Beckett is the ultimate a human ChatGPT.

The representation of violence, suffering, disease or physical changes confront filmmakers with ethical and aesthetical questions. Esther Buss sketches out the relationship between corporeality and language in five documentaries showing at the 53rd Berlinale Forum.