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Berlin International Film Festival

Berlin International Film Festival
Reporting on the most famous and fashionable, and the films, at the annual Berlin International Film Festival.
Kani Kusruti (left) and Divya Prabha in a still from All We Imagine as Light.
Asian cinema

Move over Bollywood, Indian art-house cinema is on the rise

Films such as All We Imagine as Light, Sister Midnight and Santosh are showing a different side to Indian cinema and attracting global fans.

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Asian cinema: Hong Kong film

10 of the best movies from the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival

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European cinema

Coming-of-age drama, Chinese director win Berlin film festival awards

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Asian cinema: Korean films

Review | What Does that Nature Say to You: Hong Sang-soo finds humour in domesticity

Korean director’s film examines, with humour, the difficulties of artistic life through the lens of a man meeting his girlfriend’s family.

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

Review | Blue Moon: tender drama starring Ethan Hawke and Margaret Qualley

Richard Linklater’s new film sees long-time collaborator Ethan Hawke play the American lyricist Lorenz Hart as he struggles with fading fame.

Asian cinema: Hong Kong film

In Queerpanorama, Hong Kong’s Jun Li has made his boldest film yet

Director drew from his own experiences for Queerpanorama, about a man meeting foreign men for sex in Hong Kong. It’s got Berlin buzzing.

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Asian cinema: Chinese films

Review | Girls on Wire: Wen Qi shines in Vivian Qu’s uneven genre blender

Taiwanese actress shows her versatility as a soap star turned stuntwoman in a film marred by narrative confusion and a sudden tonal change.

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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
Asian cinema: Korean films

Review | Mickey 17, wild sci-fi satire from Parasite’s Bong Joon-ho

Robert Pattinson plays the titular Mickey, a loser sent into space, where he is cloned with hilarious results in this cult-novel adaptation.

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American cinema

Review | Dreams, chilling film with Jessica Chastain about US-Mexico ties

Jessica Chastain plays the rich lover of an illegal immigrant in Michel Franco’s exploration of America’s relationship with poorer neighbour.

Asian cinema: Chinese films

Review | Living the Land a captivating tale of upheaval in 1990s rural China

Non-professional actors and stunning camerawork lift this engrossing story of the drastic changes experienced in rural China.

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
Hong Kong celebrities and icons

Profile | From child star to activist, Hong Kong actress Josephine Siao’s career

Josephine Siao began her acting career aged 6 and made over 100 films before becoming deaf. She is an activist against child sexual abuse.

Josephine Siao at an event in Hong Kong in 2011. Photo: SCMP
Asian cinema: Hong Kong film

Review | All Shall Be Well: Hong Kong LGBTQ drama highlights legal loophole

Starring Patra Au, Tai Bo and Leung Chung-hang, director Ray Yeung’s LGBTQ drama All Shall Be Well sees an elderly Hong Kong lesbian at risk of losing everything after her partner suddenly dies.

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Asian cinema: Hong Kong film

10 of the best movies at the 2024 Berlin International Film Festival

Kristen Stewart in lesbian crime flick Love Lies Bleeding, trans tale I Saw the TV Glow, and Min Bahadur Bham’s Himalayan film Shambhala all feature in our picks of the best movies at Berlin 2024.

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Asian cinema: Korean films

Review | The Roundup: Punishment – Ma Dong-seok returns as po-faced punching machine

The Roundup: Punishment, which premiered at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, sees Korean hard man Ma Dong-seok return as a no-nonsense cop who punches his way through a gang of internet scammers.

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Ma Dong-seok as po-faced detective Ma in a still from The Roundup: Punishment (category TBC). Directed by Heo Myeong-haeng and co-starring Kim Moo-yeol and Park Ji-hwan. Photo: ABO Entertainment & Bigpunch Pictures & Hong Film & B.A. Entertainment
Asian cinema: Chinese films

Review | Above the Dust: Wang Xiaoshuai evokes Christopher Nolan in rural drama

Above the Dust follows a 10-year-old boy in China who dreams of owning a water pistol, and who goes on a journey through his grandfather’s memories of the 1950s and his terrible misdeeds at the time.

Above the Dust follows a 10-year-old boy in China who dreams of owning a water pistol, and who goes on a journey through his grandfather’s memories of the 1950s and his terrible misdeeds at the time.
Asian cinema

Review | Shambhala: first Nepalese movie ever to compete in Berlin is a masterpiece

Shambala, the first Nepalese film selected for the Berlin Film Festival’s main competition, is an unhurried masterpiece about a Nepalese woman searching for her husband in the Himalayas.

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European cinema

Review | Spaceman: Netflix sci-fi drama starring Adam Sandler squanders its potential

Starring Adam Sandler, Carey Mulligan and Paul Dano, Netflix sci-fi Spaceman – which premiered at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival – has its moments, but director Johan Renck struggles to sustain interest.

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Asian cinema

Review | Black Tea: film about African life in China massively disappoints

Debuting at Berlin 2024, Black Tea, the first film about Africans in China made by an African filmmaker, exhibits a tone-deaf understanding of what the diaspora’s experience is like in the country.

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Han Chang (left) and Nina Mélo in a still from Black Tea, directed by Abderrahmane Sissako. The film, which premiered at Berlin 2024, attempts to show what life is like for Africans in China. Photo: Olivier Marceny/Cinéfrance Studios/Archipel 35/Dune Vision
Asian cinema: Hong Kong film

‘Shocking’ true stories on Hong Kong gay couples’ rights inspire new film

Ray Yeung’s film All Shall Be Well, about the struggles of a gay woman after her partner dies, is based on ‘shocking’ true events. The Hong Kong director talks about rights for same-sex couples.

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Asian cinema: Korean films

Review | A Traveler’s Needs: Isabelle Huppert leads Hong Sang-soo’s latest enigma

Korean director Hong Sang-soo returns to the Berlin International Film Festival with another typically opaque drama – in A Traveler’s Needs, Isabelle Huppert plays a mystery woman teaching French in Korea.

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Asian cinema: Chinese films

Review | Some Rain Must Fall: Chinese drama exposes cracks in a middle-class family

Director Qiu Yang’s Some Rain Must Fall centres on a well-off woman whose family fragments after an accident, in a critique on damaging dysfunctions present in the lives of China’s middle class.

Yu Aier in a still from Some Rain Must Fall (category TBC), directed by Qiu Yang and co-starring Di Shike and Wei Yibo. Photo: Wild Grass Films
European cinema

Review | Another End: Gael Garcia Bernal lights up a derivative sci-fi tale

Gael Garcia Bernal plays a widower whose wife is reanimated in the body of another woman (Renate Reinsve). Piero Messina’s film is hackneyed and gets bogged down in jargon, but is visually appealing.

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Gael García Bernal in a still from Another End (category to be confirmed). Directed by Piero Messina, the film co-stars Renate Reinsve and Bérénice Bejo. Photo: Matteo Casilli/Indigo Film
Asian cinema: Chinese films

Like a Chinese Michael Crichton, Lin Jianjie went from science to filmmaking

Brief History of a Family made a splash at Sundance and is about to screen at the Berlin film festival. Its Chinese director, Lin Jianjie, reflects on its subject – China’s middle class – and dreamlike ending.

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Asian cinema: Chinese films

The 10 best films of Zhang Yimou, director from China’s fifth generation

Zhang Yimou has directed wuxia epics (Hero, Shadow), comedies (One Second, Keep Cool) and films about 20th-century China (Raise the Red Lantern, Red Sorghum). Here is our pick of his top 10 films.

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Asian cinema: Hong Kong film

Review | Mad Fate: destiny vs free will in absurdist Hong Kong murder thriller

Lam Ka-tung and Mirror’s Lokman Yeung try to exert their free will and change their destiny in director Soi Cheang’s Hong Kong-set genre thrill ride with a dash of fantasy thrown in.

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Lokman Yeung (left) and Lam Ka-tung in a still from “Mad Fate”.
Asian cinema: Korean films

Netflix thriller Kill Boksoon star Jeon Do-yeon on playing mum and assassin

Jeon Do-yeon, the star of Netflix Korean thriller about an assassin with a wayward daughter, talked at the Berlin International Film Festival about her first time playing a killer and what it means to be a good parent.

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Jeon Do-yeon as Gil Boksoon in a still from Kill Boksoon. Photo: No Ju-han/Netflix.
Asian cinema: Korean films

Exclusive | ‘It’s a restart for me’: Fan Bingbing on return to acting after tax scandal

Chinese actress Fan Bingbing, at the Berlin International Film Festival with her new film Green Night, opens up about how tough it was not acting for five years, and what she learned from it.

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American cinema

10 of the best from Berlin film festival 2023, from Past Lives to Reality

From Past Lives, a beautifully bittersweet romance that may go on to win multiple awards, to true-life drama Reality, starring Sydney Sweeney, our pick of 10 of the best movies at this year’s Berlin film festival.

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