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James Mottram

Right from the off, there was heavy snow on the streets and a chill wind blowing through the 75th Berlin International Film Festival.
Politics has often dominated this particular cinematic gathering, and this year was no different. On the opening night, jury head Todd Haynes bashed US President Donlad Trump and honorary Golden Bear winner Tilda Swinton warned that “the inhumane is being perpetrated on our watch”.
The spectre of global conflict also loomed large in the selection of films by artistic director Tricia Tuttle.
While the jury’s choice of Norwegian film Dreams (Sex Love) as the Golden Bear winner was not politically motivated, the Berlinale reminded us that festivals are prime platforms to inspire debate.

Here are 10 of the best films screened at this year’s festival.
1. Queerpanorama


With a title like this, Hong Kong director Jun Li Jun-shuo always had a fair chance of his film being selected for the festival’s Panorama strand.
The explicit, black-and-white tale of an anonymous gay man (Jayden Cheung Dik-man) who bounces between hookups, always adopting a false identity borrowed from his previous lover, had a real conversational purity to it.
Sadly, Li’s third feature became overshadowed by politics when he presented the film and explained to the audience that Cheung’s co-star Erfan Shekarriz boycotted the festival under the belief that the event was not supportive of Palestinians.
While German police confirmed they were investigating his speech, it is not yet clear whether Li – who received threats after reading aloud Shekarriz’s statement in support of the Palestinian cause – is under scrutiny.
2. The Ice Tower


Director Lucile Hadzihalilovic has always immersed viewers in hermetically sealed worlds in films like Innocence and Earwig.
So it goes for her latest, the story of a teenaged orphan (Clara Pacini) who stumbles upon a 1970s-era film shoot for fairy tale The Snow Queen, ingratiates herself as an extra and becomes entranced by its enigmatic star, Cristina (an imperious Marion Cotillard).
Hadzihalilovic’s off-screen partner, filmmaker Gaspar Noé, adds humour – and a wig! – as the production’s exasperated director.
A stylish and seductive exploration of the power of cinema and myth, its icy heart has a timeless quality. The film rightly took the Silver Bear for outstanding artistic contribution.
3. Islands

Vacation noir (dark holiday) became a buzz phrase bandied around for German director Jan-Ole Gerster’s deliciously ambiguous sunburned tale of a washed-up tennis coach (Sam Riley) who becomes entwined with married holidaymakers (Stacy Martin, Jack Farthing) after they hire him to give lessons to their son.
Drawing from the same whirlpool as classics like Plein Soleil and L’Avenntura, it puts a fresh spin on the femme fatale, with Martin nonchalantly throwing her martini olive over the balcony after her husband disappears.
Riley, offering his best turn since his 2007 debut Control, excels as the booze-soaked one-time contender who still hangs onto a story about beating Rafael Nadal.
4. Reflection in a Dead Diamond


In the week when Amazon-MGM announced that Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, long-time custodians of the James Bond franchise, were stepping back, it seems apt that this bizarre spy-movie riff by French husband-and-wife filmmakers Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani should premiere in competition.
Neither spoof nor parody exactly, it is more like a fetishistic meditation on the tropes of 007, as tuxedoed men and women in deadly dresses float around a high-stakes plot that would take an evil genius to decipher.
With a title Ian Fleming would be proud of, it slightly, even arrogantly, outstays its welcome but remains a bold spin of the roulette wheel.
5. Yunan

Storms, both real and emotional, marked this striking second feature from Ameer Fakher Eldin (The Stranger), an ambitious character study starring Lebanese comic actor Georges Khabbaz as Munir, an Arabic-speaking author who travels to a remote part of northern Germany contemplating suicide.
Alongside Khabbaz, the legendary Hanna Schygulla, star of many a film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, gave one of the warmest, wisest performances of the festival as the kindly guest house owner who takes in this moody outsider.
6. Lurker

One of several titles that received a world premiere at last month’s Sundance Film Festival, Lurker was easily the best film to receive its European premiere in Berlin. In the interim, Focus bought the film for distribution and it is easy to see why.
Writer-director Alex Russell, whose past credits include hit television shows Beef and The Bear, delivers a taut tale of celebrity worship as a Los Angeles retail assistant (Théodore Pellerin) gets swept into the entourage of a rising British music star named Oliver (Archie Madekwe).
Skewering Gen Z “creatives” and the fragility of fame, it walks a fine line between being funny and frightening.
7. All I Had Was Nothingness

A line-up of strong non-fiction titles included two films reflecting on the Israel-Gaza war: A Letter to David and Holding Liat, the latter winning the best documentary prize.
But the most jaw-dropping documentary was All I Had Was Nothingness, a gateway into the 1985 film Shoah, Claude Lanzmann’s celebrated 9½-hour investigation of the Holocaust.
Director Guillaume Ribot narrates excerpts from the late director’s memoir, cut to unseen outtakes, in an attempt to lift the lid on Lanzmann’s epic 12-year journey interviewing survivors and perpetrators, often using hidden cameras – a process that left Lanzmann haunted, as he questioned man’s extraordinary capacity for evil.
Ribot does a fine job in showing the impact the film had on its maker.
8. The Light


Opening films are always a gamble, often designed to launch festivals with a loud bang that everyone soon forgets. This family portrait from Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run, Cloud Atlas) riled many critics, although it is easy to see why Tuttle chose this love letter to a rain-soaked Berlin.
No question, this look at the state of the world through the eyes of a typical dysfunctional German family, led by Lars Eidinger and Nicolette Krebitz, was overblown, especially with unnecessary musical interludes featuring sing-a-long performances of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”.
But Tykwer is a vibrant, empathetic filmmaker whose concern is genuine.
9. Blue Moon

A Richard Linklater movie is always an event, especially a reunion with his long-time collaborator Ethan Hawke, star of his Before … trilogy.
Here, he commands the screen as real-life lyricist Lorenz Hart, a boozy bon vivant whose career is on the slide on the very night his erstwhile partner Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott) is being lauded for new show Oklahoma!
Whether Blue Moon has the legs to carry Hawke into next year’s awards season is doubtful (a dodgy bald cap did not help), and indeed it was Scott who claimed the prize for best supporting performance.
But this remains a melancholic mood piece with a Wildean wit.
10. Dreams

Think of films like Chronic or New Order and it is not hard to imagine Michel Franco as a director with ice in his veins.
His latest is a San Francisco-set tale of a philanthropic socialite (Jessica Chastain) engaged in a sexually charged affair with a Mexican ballet dancer (Isaac Hernández) who works for the benevolent foundation her father has set up.
Chastain shows a rare courage in taking on this privileged beast of a character, a ruthless woman who is as cold as she is kinky.
The film crystallises the political hot potato that is immigration in a lean 100 minutes.
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Berlin 2025: 10 of the festival’s best films, from The Light to Dreams and Islands

Marion Cotillard in a still from The Ice Tower, screened at the Berlin International Film Festival. Photo: Handout

Lars Eidinger in a still from The Light, Tom Tykwer’s film that opened the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival. Photo: Handout

Producers Yngve Saether (left) and Hege Hauff Hvattum and director and screenwriter Dag Johan Haugerud (centre) with the Golden Bear for best film for Dreams (Sex Love) at the Berlin film festival. Photo: AFP

(From left) Dylan Torrell, Jack Farthing, Stacy Martin and Sam Riley in a still from Islands. Photo: Handout

Georges Khabbaz and Hanna Schygulla in a still from Yunan. Photo: Red Balloon Film, Productions Microclimat, Intramovies. Photo: Handout

Archie Madekwe (left) and Théodore Pellerin in a still from Lurker. Photo: Handout

Claude Lanzmann in a still from All I Had Was Nothingness. Photo: Handout

Margaret Qualley and Ethan Hawke in a still from Blue Moon. Photo: Sabrina Lantos/Sony Pictures Classics

Jessica Chastain in a still from Dreams. Photo: Teorema

Berlin 2025: What Does that Nature Say to You movie review – Hong Sang-soo’s comedy drama

Ha Seong-guk (left) and Kwon Hae-hyo in a still from What Does that Nature Say to You. Photo: Jeonwonsa Film Co

Ha Seong-guk (left) as Dong-hwa and Kang So-yi as his girlfriend, Jun-hee, in a still from What Does that Nature Say to You, directed by Hong Sang-soo. Kwon Hae-hyo and Cho Yun-hee co-star. Photo: Jeonwonsa Film Co

Cho Yun-hee (left) and Kwon Hae-hyo in a still from What Does that Nature Say to You. Photo: Jeonwonsa Film Co

Park Mi-so (left) as Jun-hee’s older sister Neung-hee, Ha Seong-guk as poet Dong-hwa and Kang So-yi as Jun-hee, his girlfriend, in a still from What Does that Nature Say to You. Photo: Jeonwonsa Film Co

Berlin 2025: Girls on Wire movie review – Wen Qi stars in Vivian Qu’s uneven genre blender

Liu Haocun (left) and Wen Qi in a still from Girls on Wire (category to be confirmed; Mandarin and Sichuanese), directed by Vivian Qu. Photo: L’Avventura Films

Vivian Qu, director of Girls on Wire, attends a press conference at the Berlin International Film Festival. Actress Liu Haocun, one of the stars of the movie, is on her left. Photo: AP

Berlin 2025: Mickey 17 movie review – Parasite’s Bong Joon-ho back with wild sci-fi satire

Robert Pattinson as Mickey 17 and Mickey 18 in a still from Bong Jooh-ho’s sci-fi comedy Mickey 17, screened at the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival. Naomi Ackie and Mark Ruffalo co-star. Photo: Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

Naomi Ackie as Nasha and Robert Pattinson, who plays two versions of his character Mickey, in a still from Mickey 17. Photo: Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

Mark Ruffalo (centre) as Kennedy Marshall and Toni Collette (right) as his wife, Ylfa, in a still from Mickey 17. Photo: Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

Berlin 2025: Living the Land movie review – searing depiction of China’s rural poor

Wang Shang (left) and Zhang Chuwen in a still from Living the Land, directed by Huo Meng and screened in competition at the 2025 Berlin Internaitonal Film Festival. Photo: Floating Light (Foshan) Film and Culture

A still from Living the Land. Photo: Floating Light (Foshan) Film and Culture

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Sex, love, spies, fame, family, trauma and plenty of politics were on the menu at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival


Sex, love, spies, fame, family, trauma and plenty of politics were on the menu at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival.
