*The huge Berlinale Palast is usually filled to capacity for premieres. Photo: Berlinale/Richard Hübner*

The Berlinale 2026 programme is extensive and often overwhelming. It is one of the world’s largest public film festivals and aims to cater to diverse cinematic tastes with over 200 films, which cannot all be included in the competition section. With films ranging from blockbusters to experimental art, it is quite on-brand that this world-renowned German festival has chosen to structurally categorise these films into the various sections it has to offer. And since we believe cinema should not be all about competition, we’ve decided to provide our readers with an overview of all the amazing in-and-out-of-competition films the festival will be airing this year.

Competition

Kurtuluş (Salvation)

Emin Alper’s artistic voice remains understated. Yet his provincial dramas, which compellingly explore the conflict between old traditions and a frequently overbearing state, are virtually textbook examples of a democratic aesthetic. This film should also spark your interest in his earlier work.

Dao

The French-Senegalese director Alain Gomis has already been represented twice in the Berlinale Competition. With his new film, he weaves connections between France and Guinea-Bissau, the small but cinematically significant West African nation.

Rosebush Pruning
Berlin-based Brazilian-Algerian director Karim Aïnouz repeatedly surprises with new settings, constellations and interests. In his latest film, he brings together a predominantly American cast in Spain.

The Loneliest Man in Town
The Austrian duo Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel, virtuoso border-crossers between documentary and fiction, tell the story of an ageing blues musician awaiting his end in desolate circumstances. Then, unexpectedly, life opens up once more.

Special

The Blood Countess

Gruesome stories surround the Hungarian Countess Bathory (1560–1614). She represents a female strand within south-eastern European vampire mythology. Ulrike Ottinger takes a more playful approach to bloodlust in her comedy The Blood Countess. She sends Isabelle Huppert, together with a maid (played by Birgit Minichmayr), on a chase through Austrian mythology and intriguing locations such as the Narrenturm, in a characteristically cult ensemble film.

The Testament of Ann Lee

Amanda Seyfried has just landed a major cinema role in The Housemaid. Accordingly, the excitement should be considerable when she arrives at the Berlinale with The Testament of Ann Lee (which will also be released in cinemas in March). Seyfried plays a young woman in England on the cusp of the 19th century who proves to be religiously gifted and, after emigrating to America, goes on to found the Shaker movement – people who allow themselves to be “shaken” by Jesus. The film is directed by Mona Fastvold, previously known as the artistic partner of Brady Corbet (The Brutalist).

Saccharine

For some cinema-goers, the thriller The Substance with Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley was simply too intense to watch. Unfortunately, they will probably also have to skip this even more radical body-horror, in which Midori Francis plays a medical student persuaded to take a dangerous slimming pill. Saccharine pushes every boundary, systematically and cruelly. Disgust and insight in perfect harmony.

Monster Pabrik Rambut
Director Edwin was recognised early on by the Berlinale as a talent and now returns with a full-blown blockbuster. Popular singer Rachel Amanda stars in a wild story about workplace terror and resistance.

WAX & GOLD
Viennese filmmaker Ruth Beckermann, who recently triumphed at the Berlinale with Mutzenbacher, presents a documentary this time, shot in a grand hotel in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia.

Lord of the Flies
Television series appear in the Special section this year as well. There is sure to be great interest in this new British adaptation of the literary classic.

Perspectives

Filipiñana

South-East Asia forms an intriguing focus at this Berlinale, with blockbusters from Indonesia as well as this debut feature from the Philippines. Rafael Manuel tells the story of a country club where the wealthy elite of the highly oligarchic Philippine society keep to themselves. A 17-year-old employee begins to form her own impressions.

Chronicles from the Siege
Abdallah Alkhatib comes from Yarmouk, a district of the Syrian capital Damascus. Since 2011, he was part of the uprising against the brutal president Bashar al-Assad. He has lived in Germany since 2019 and now devotes his work to the history of freedom struggles in his region of origin.

Hangar Rojo
The installation of the neoliberal torture president Pinochet in Chile in 1973 was one of the key moments in the emergence of our contemporary world. With his debut film, Julian Pablo Sallato returns to this turning point and tells an everyday story from it.

Where To?
The film title could hardly be more resonant: Where to, Israel? Where to, Germany? Assaf Machnes tells the story of a Palestinian taxi driver in Berlin who has a regular passenger from Israel. A nocturnal tale from the global city on the Spree.

Panorama

Shanghai Daughter

Not only the Berlinale, but Germany as a whole is currently reassessing its relationship with the People’s Republic of China. Every new film can offer important insights, such as this story of a woman from Shanghai who travels to a region where rubber is the most important economic commodity.

London
Sebastian Brameshuber tells the story of a man who frequently drives between Vienna and Salzburg, picking up passengers and striking up conversations with them. Starring: Viennese original Bobby Sommer. Berlin-based American expatriate Ted Fendt, whom we have long admired and who is represented in the Forum with Auslandsreise, makes a guest appearance in London.

Staatsschutz
Chen Emilie Yan plays a public prosecutor who attempts to expose the biases of a racist German justice system from within. The new film by the director of Futur Drei.

Traces
Men predominantly fight on the front line, but women behind the front in Ukraine are fighting too – for freedom, against resignation, for a good future. Alisa Kovalenko and Marysia Nikitiuk explore the strength of a female civil society.

Generation

Quatro Meninas

A story from the 19th century: four wealthy girls each have a maid, and these domestic slaves decide to run away. They have not, however, reckoned with the reaction of their “mistresses”. Director Karen Suzane recalls a time when many freedoms were fought for in Brazil.

Feito Pipa
Brazil is a global middle power and almost a cinematic superpower. Here Allan Deberton tells a story of the road to fame and fortune: young Gugu wants to become a footballer, but must also take care of his grandmother.

Ghost School
Ten-year-old Rabia wants to know why her school is being closed. Her curiosity leads her to a social reality that, even in Pakistan, is often shaped by the instrumentalisation of radical religious beliefs.

The Lights, They Fall
Austrian-born Saša Vajda tells a coming-of-age story from Berlin’s periphery in his feature debut. Ilay, 16, drifts through the summer while his mother lies dying in the flat.

Shorts

An Accident
Sometimes a single detail from a very brief synopsis is enough to spark curiosity: Austrian director Angelika Spangel lets events escalate in a village, and now one is keen to know what kind of (dangerous) game it is that excites the schoolchildren.

Forum

Einar Schleef – I Found No Germany

Sandra Prechtel presents a portrait of the theatre-maker who, through his productions, twisted fascist aesthetics towards the left or into the utopian. Working with extensive archival material, the director examines whether there is an image of Schleef that could truly be said to capture the elusive artist.

Liebhaberinnen
Elfriede Jelinek’s novel of the same name serves as the starting point for this adaptation, featuring a strong ensemble cast led by Johanna Wokalek.

Black Lions – Roman Wolves
One of the great works of African cinema reaches completion after decades: Haile Gerima presents a collage about Italy’s rule in Ethiopia.

Chronos: River of Time
Volker Koepp, the great documentarian of Eastern Europe, has been taking stock for years yet continues to set off anew. Lithuania, Moldova and Ukraine are his stations this time. A meditation, not least, on a war that so many people choose to misunderstand.

Forum Expanded

Castings for a Film, Ihsan’s Diary

Casting sessions are always excellent opportunities to get to know people, question role models and reflect on oneself. In this case, the focus is on a film project in Beirut about a soldier stationed in Jerusalem in 1915. Shown as part of the Forum Expanded exhibition.

Fanfiction: Volcanology
As part of the Forum Expanded exhibition, audiences can encounter Riar Rizaldi from Indonesia, one of the most important contemporary essay filmmakers.

Forever…Forever
Austrian filmmaker Johann Lurf keeps the traditions of classical avant-garde cinema alive: light, camera, action!

Let There Be Whistleblowers
An obituary for Flo and Ken Jacobs, two giants of radical cinema.

Retrospective

Slacker

Richard Linklater is one of the great independent American directors. His unpredictable career began in 1990 with Slacker, populated by a large number of sometimes quite eccentric characters who form a kind of counter-society in the Texan city of Austin. The term “slacker” became defining.

D’Est
One of the most beautiful films by the wonderful Chantal Akerman: a journey through Eastern Europe shortly after its opening up.

Prince in Hellland
In the early 1990s, Rosa von Praunheim put a camera into the hands of the then 25-year-old Michael Stock as a recommendation for life. Thankfully so, because otherwise this grimy, beautiful Berlin film might never have existed. A fairy tale about the brutal reality of Berlin’s drug scene. A fairy tale about Berlin shortly after reunification. A fairy tale steeped in gay melancholy.

Wildwood, NJ
A magnificent documentary in which almost exclusively women speak about their summer beach holidays in Wildwood, New Jersey. In staccato speech they explain themselves; through its editing, the film becomes dialectical and feminist.

Classics

Panelstory, or How a Housing Estate Is Born
Socialism promised everyone functional housing and, with its prefabricated blocks, did not do too badly. Yet progress is not safe from the critical or ironic gaze of the great Věra Chytilová, who here sharply demonstrates that even the best planning reaches its limits when many people are expected to live together in close quarters.

Secrets of a Soul
The famous instructional film on psychoanalysis by G.W. Pabst – the director recently brought back into focus by Daniel Kehlmann’s novel Lichtspiel – is to be presented at the Berlinale with neurotechnological gimmicks.

Assarab
A poor farmer finds money in a sack of flour and sets off on a journey to respond to this life-changing event. Ahmed Bouanani’s masterpiece is not neorealist, as one might expect, but full of references to myth, art and literature from the Arab world.

The Pornographers
Japanese cinema is no stranger to taboo-breakers, but in 1966 Shōhei Imamura went particularly far with this unsparing story of a porn filmmaker determined to prise open the unconscious of his highly form-conscious compatriots.