The “Forum & Friends” program shows selected films from the Forum special and main program, extending it beyond the festival line-up in order to contextualize and widen the perspective.
Keren Cytter is the guest of Forum & Friends VI. Her films merge artificial form and deconstruction: fragment, plot, absurdity and pop culture spiral into an energetic now-state that pushes film, genre and perception to the edge of trance. (26–27 November 2025)
In September 2025, Forum and Forum Expanded present a curated selection of films from their Berlinale lineups at Cine-Argo in Tehran. “Echoing Voices” presents three feature-length films from Forum and three short films from Forum Expanded, marked by formal openness, aesthetic sensitivity, and poetic depth. (13–21 September 2025)
The fourth edition of Forum & Friends offers a retrospective of the 55th Berlinale Forum, with a focus on cinema from Eastern and Southeastern Europe. Featuring films by Želimir Žilnik (Serbia), Yuri Semashko (Belarus), Vitaly Mansky (Ukraine), and Tamara Stepanyan (Armenia). (5–6 April 2025)
The third block of the Forum & Friends series is dedicated to the documentary works of the Minsk-based Studio Tatyana, the only independent “women's film and video studio” in the former USSR. Founded in 1991 by camerawoman Tatyana Loginova and the screenwriters and directors Ella Milova and Irina Pismennaja, it carried out a wide range of film production and mediation work. (12–13 October 2024)
From July 24 to 28 Forum & Friends is dedicated to the memory of director Thomas Heise, who died in May 29 and whose films were shown regularly in the Forum program. (24–28 July 2024)
After the festival is before the festival: films from the Forum and the Forum Special program and beyond. With films by Alexander Horwath, Park Soo-nam, Anka Schmid, Agnes Barmettler, James Danaqyumptewa, Maria Lassnig and Tereza Trautman. (27–29 February 2024)
