Berlinale Forum & Forum Expanded

Simon Rothöhler on Anthropocene figures, digital imaging technologies and material aesthetic differences in the films Poznámky z Eremocénu (Notes from Eremocene) by Viera Čákanyová and SUPER NATURAL by Jorge Jácome.

The Forum special programme "Fiktionsbescheinigung" sets out to counter the white gaze on German film history. Film curators Karina Griffith, Jacqueline Nsiah and Can Sungu discuss this year’s selection of films with Cristina Nord.

On the films made by the children of the disappeared, a state prosecutor as a hero for the big screen and the significance of the Forum film EL JUICIO in the process of coming to terms with the legacy of the Argentinean dictatorship. By Luciano Monteagudo

What does it mean to program a filmfestival if your country is at war? We talk with Yuliia Kovalenko who is part of our preview team in Odessa how the film community in the Ukraine deals with the situation.

The topic of this summer festival by the Berlinale Forum & Forum Expanded is film and nature and the human perspective. In our podcast we are talking with director Dane Komljen, whose film AFTERWATER opens the summer festival.

A podcast about the Forum program 2022 with Cristina Nord, head of Berlinale Forum. We are talking about non-human perspectives, the second year of Covid films, the surprising amount of literature adaptations. Also: how have our viewing habits changed and what does it mean for film culture? 

Powerful documentaries stand alongside highly personal essay films. Features draw on pared-down plots or a penchant for the absurd in equal measure. The 28 films that make up the Forum main programme celebrate the diversity of cinematic forms and explore the predicaments of the past and present in unflinching fashion.

A total of 34 works from 20 countries are being presented at the Forum Expanded cinemas, at the silent green Betonhalle, as well as at SAVVY Contemporary and in the Marshall McLuhan Salon of the Embassy of Canada in Berlin.

Queer flamboyance in Rio de Janeiro, inverted ethnography in Bärwalde and the camera-aided dissections of Sohrab Shahid Saless: this year's Forum Special explores marginalised areas of film history. The “Fiktionsbescheinigung” series continues, while two newly restored historical films round off the programme.

The first selected films and installations include works by Lei Lei, Deborah Stratman and Eduardo Williams. The Forum Expanded group exhibition will once again be presented at silent green Betonhalle. The show opens on February 15, 2023.

In summer 2019, Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art appointed Cristina Nord as the head of the Berlinale Forum. Cristina Nord had previously been working at the Goethe-Institut Brussels, which granted her special leave for a period of almost four years. On July 1st, 2023, she will return to the Goethe-Institut to head the institute in Nairobi. The 2023 Berlinale will thus mark her last edition of the Forum.

The juries of CICAE and FIPRESCI, the Ecumenical jury, the juries of the Caligari Film Prize and Peace Film Prize and the TEDDY jury have awarded films from the Forum and Forum Expanded.