Berlinale Forum & Forum Expanded

Gaps and omissions, counter-narratives and revisions: many of the film works selected for the 21st Berlinale Forum Expanded focus on the ways in which individuals and states write their histories.

The 56th Forum offers opportunities to explore the cinema status quo in all its many facets and shows films by people who take their work and its impact seriously: the way it affects our coexistence, our battles, our reconciliations, our history and stories.

In its third year, the Forum Special programme focuses on closeness and neighbourhood, examining the “condition féminine” – and female directors East and West, now and back in the day.

In addition to the Silver and Golden Bears, various independent juries award prizes at the Berlinale. Forum films received several awards this year.

The Berlinale Documentary Award 2025 goes to HOLDING LIAT by Brandon Kramer. The Forum films CANONE EFFIMERO and LA MEMORIA DE LAS MARIPOSAS (The Memory of Butterflies) received Honorary Mentions.

This year's Caligari film prize goes to FWENDS by Sophie Somerville. The jury finds the film to be “a vivid document of a tangibly pleasurable creative process, a cosmopolitan testimony to the fears and motivations of young women”.

Beth B's film SALVATION! was shown at the Forum in 1987. In our podcast series "Arsenal 60ff. — Film Talks from 5 Decades", we are publishing the audience discussion with Beth B, the main actor Stephen McHattie and the passionate Berlin film audience, moderated by Ulrich Gregor.

We are opening our audio archive with the podcast "Arsenal 60ff". The audience discussions during the Berlinale Forum are legendary – enthusiastic and often entertaining. We are presenting a selection and contextualizing them in conversations with experts.

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.

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.  

“No matter where you go, the screen is always white.” Julian Ross on Takahiko Iimura’s short stay in Berlin, that shaped his artistic practice in film and video in a transitional moment of his career.