New films from Richard Linklater, Michel Franco and Hong Sang-soo are among the competition highlights for the 75th Berlin International Film Festival, the world’s largest public film festival, which unveiled it full lineup today.
Linklater’s Blue Moon, a period drama about the final days of Lorenz Hart, half of the Rodgers & Hart songwriting team, will have its world premiere at the Berlinale, marking Linklater’s fourth time in Berlin competition. At his last go-around, with Boyhood in 2014, he walked away with the Silver Bear for best director. The feature, starring Ethan Hawke, Margaret Qualley, Bobby Cannavale and Andrew Scott, will be released worldwide by Sony Pictures Classics.
Berlinale regular, and four-time Silver Bear winner Hong Sang-soo returns with his latest intimate drama, What Does That Nature Say to You?; and Norwegian director Dag Johan Haugerud, whose feature Sex was an audience favorite at Berlin last year, is back with Dreams, the last feature in his Sex, Love, Dreams trilogy.
Other competition highlights include Hot Milk, the directoral debut of Polish screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz (Ida, Disobedience); Michel Franco’s Dreams, the Mexican helmer’s re-teaming with his Jessica Chastain; and French drama The Ice Tower from director Lucile Hadžihalilović, starring Marion Cotillard, Gaspar Noé, and August Diehl.
Opening the press conference, Tuttle nodded to Berlin’s reputation as the most political of the big festivals.
“People often ask me, and the press often ask me if we’re a political festival, and we cannot, and we do not shy away from this,” Tuttle said. “It’s arguably in the DNA of the city itself and also in the festival itself, but it’s fair to say that the Berlinale is many things, and for all festivals and all culture right now, the news agenda can often dominate the discourse, but we really hope, and we believe, that the films that audiences are going to see over the next over the weeks of the festival are going to get people talking about the vibrancy of the art form itself and the films themselves.”
Last year in Berlin, politics overshadowed the cinema, when Berlinale award winners who called for a ceasefire in Gaza and made pro-Palestinian statements on stage sparked a backlash in Germany. Prominent politicians, both left- and right-wing, branded the statements “antisemitic” and called for “consequences” from the festival.
Tuttle admitted the situation in Berlin this year will be “challenging,” especially as Germany is in the midst of a national election campaign, with voting to be held on Feb.23, the final day of the festival.
“But let’s be honest, this year has been really challenging for every festival,” said Tuttle. “We’re living in a world that’s very divisive and divided, and discourses not always friendly and open, and so that creates a challenging environment. But as challenging as it’s been, and I mean this really honestly, it’s also been really joyous, really pleasurable, and a real privilege to watch the films that we’ve just talked about here and to work with our teams to put together a program. So I think it would be crazy for me to complain about the challenges when we have these amazing films to show to audiences.”
There are certainly plenty of political talking points in the official lineup, which include the world premieres of Marcin Wierzchowski’s Das Deutsche Volk, a look at the far-right attacks in the German city of Hanau in 2020; Michtav Le’David (A Letter to David) from Israeli director Tom Shoval, a cinematic letter to his friend David Cunio, who was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7th; and My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow, a documentary from U.S. director Julia Loktev, which documents independent journalists in Moscow facing government crackdown as Russia invades Ukraine. All three films will screen in the Berlinale Special program.
Berlin has already announced most of the films screening in its gala sections this year, including Mickey 17, the sci-fi feature starring Robert Pattinson from Parasite director Bong Joon-Ho, which will bow out of competition, and Das Licht, the new film from German helmer Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run, Cloud Atlas), which will open the 2025 Berlinale on Feb. 13.
Berlin’s sidebars are also complete. The full lineup for Panorama — an “explicitly queer, explicitly feminist, explicitly political” section featuring indie arthouse cinema from around the world — as well as for Forum (experimental cinema) and Generation (youth and children’s films) were unveiled earlier this month.
Sidebar highlights include new features from arthouse favorites Ira Sachs (Peter Hujar’s Day), Denis Côté (Paul), and Michel Gondry (Maya, Give Me a Title).
U.S. director Todd Haynes (Carol, Far From Heaven), whose debut feature Poison won the Teddy Award at Berlin in 1991, is president of this year’s international jury which will pick the winners of Berlin’s Gold and Silver Bears. Tilda Swinton, who has screened a total of 26 films in Berlin over the years, will receive this year’s Honorary Golden Bear for lifetime achievement.
Berlinale 2025 Competition
Ari, director: Léonor Serraille
France / Belgium (2025)
Blue Moon, director: Richard Linklater
USA / Ireland (2025)
La cache (The Safe House), director: Lionel Baier
Switzerland / Luxembourg / France (2025)
Dreams, director: Michel Franco
Mexico (2025)
Drømmer (Dreams (Sex Love)), director: Dag Johan Haugerud
Norway (2024)
Geu jayeoni nege mworago hani (What Does That Nature Say to You), director: Hong Sangsoo
South Korea (2025)
Hot Milk, director: Rebecca Lenkiewicz
United Kingdom (2025)
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, director: Mary Bronstein
USA (2024)
Kontinental ’25, director: Radu Jude
Romania (2025)
El mensaje (The Message), director: Iván Fund
Argentina / Spain (2025)
Mother’s Baby, director: Johanna Moder
Austria / Switzerland / Germany (2025)
O último azul (The Blue Trail), director: Gabriel Mascaro
Brazil / Mexico / Chile / Netherlands (2025)
Reflet dans un diamant mort (Reflection in a Dead Diamond), directors: Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani
Belgium / Luxembourg / Italy / France (2025)
Sheng xi zhi di (Living the Land), director: Huo Meng
People’s Republic of China (2025)
Strichka chasu (Timestamp), director: Kateryna Gornostai
Ukraine / Luxembourg / Netherlands / France (2025)
La Tour de Glace (The Ice Tower), director: Lucile Hadžihalilović
France / Germany (2025)
Was Marielle weiß (What Marielle Knows), director: Frédéric Hambalek
Germany (2025)
Xiang fei de nv hai (Girls on Wire), director: Vivian Qu
People’s Republic of China (2025)
Yunan, director: Ameer Fakher Eldin
Germany / Canada / Italy / Palestine / Qatar / Jordan / Saudi Arabia (2025)
Berlinale Special 2025
After This Death, director: Lucio Castro
USA (2025)
A Complete Unknown (Like A Complete Unknown), director: James Mangold
USA (2024)
Heldin (Late Shift), director: Petra Volpe
Switzerland / Germany (2025)
Islands, director: Jan-Ole Gerster
Germany (2025)
Köln 75, director: Ido Fluk
Germany / Poland / Belgium (2025)
Das Licht (The Light), director: Tom Tykwer
Germany (2025)
Lurker, director: Alex Russell
USA / Italy (2025)
Mickey 17, director: Bong Joon Ho
USA / South Korea / United Kingdom (2024)
The Thing with Feathers, director: Dylan Southern
United Kingdom (2025)
Ancestral Visions of the Future, director: Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese
France / Lesotho / Germany / Saudi Arabia (2025)
Das Deutsche Volk, director: Marcin Wierzchowski
Germany (2025)
Honey Bunch, directors: Madeleine Sims-Fewer, Dusty Mancinelli
Canada (2025)
Je n’avais que le néant – “Shoah” par Claude Lanzmann (All I Had Was Nothingness), director: Guillaume Ribot
France (2025)
Kein Tier. So Wild. (No Beast. So Fierce.), director: Burhan Qurbani
Germany / Poland / France (2025)
Leibniz – Chronik eines verschollenen Bildes (Leibniz – Chronicle of a Lost Painting), directors: Edgar Reitz, Anatol Schuster
Germany (2025)
A melhor mãe do mundo (The Best Mother in the World | Die beste Mutter der Welt), director: Anna Muylaert
Brazil / Argentina (2025)
Michtav Le’David (A Letter to David), director: Tom Shoval
Israel / USA (2025)
My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow, director: Julia Loktev
USA (2024)
Pa-gwa (The Old Woman with the Knife), director: Min Kyu-dong
South Korea (2025)
Shoah, director: Claude Lanzmann
France (1985)
Friendship’s Death, director: Peter Wollen
United Kingdom (1987)
Berlinale Perspectives 2025
Al Mosta’mera (The Settlement), director: Mohamed Rashad
Egypt / France / Germany / Saudi Arabia / Qatar (2025)
Baksho Bondi (Shadowbox), directors: Tanushree Das, Saumyananda Sahi
India / France / USA / Spain (2025)
BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions, director: Kahlil Joseph
USA (2025)
Come la notte (Where the Night Stands Still), director: Liryc Dela Cruz
Italy / Philippines (2025)
El Diablo Fuma (y guarda las cabezas de los cerillos quemados en la misma caja) (The Devil Smokes (and Saves the Burnt Matches in the Same Box)), director: Ernesto Martinez Bucio
Mexico (2025)
Duas Vezes João Liberada (Two Times João Liberada), director: Paula Tomás Marques
Portugal (2025)
Hé mán (Eel), director: Chu Chun-Teng
Taiwan (2025)
How to Be Normal and the Oddness of the Other World, director: Florian Pochlatko
Austria (2025)
Kaj ti je deklica (Little Trouble Girls), director: Urška Đukić
Slovenia / Italy / Croatia / Serbia (2025)
Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo), director: Joel Alfonso Vargas
USA (2025)
Minden Rendben (Growing Down), director: Bálint Dániel Sós
Hungary (2025)
Mit der Faust in die Welt schlagen (Punching the World), director: Constanze Klaue
Germany (2025)
On vous croit (We Believe You), directors: Arnaud Dufeys, Charlotte Devillers
Belgium (2025)
Le rendez-vous de l’été (That Summer in Paris), director: Valentine Cadic
France (2025)