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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.
Juliette Binoche (left) and Anna Calder-Marshall in a still from Queen at Sea, which won the Jury Prize at the 76th Berlin International Film Festival.
Asian cinema

10 of the best movies from the 2026 Berlin International Film Festival

Controversy overshadowed an engaging selection at this year’s Berlinale, the best of which included Rose, Josephine and Queen at Sea.

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Asian cinema: Chinese films

How Anthony Chen’s We Are All Strangers captures the beauty of Singapore

Asian cinema: Japanese films

Review | A New Dawn: climate crisis meets fireworks in confusing Japanese anime

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Asian cinema: Chinese films

Review | We Are All Strangers: Anthony Chen’s epic look at fatherhood in Singapore

A beautiful conclusion to Anthony Chen’s ‘Growing Up’ trilogy, We Are All Strangers is a study of family and love in all its forms.

(Standing, from left) Yeo Yann Yann and Andi Lim in a still from We Are All Strangers, directed by Anthony Chen. Photo: Giraffe Pictures
Malaysia

‘I carry him with me’: Michelle Yeoh’s tearful tribute to parents at Berlinale

The Malaysian actress received the Honorary Golden Bear award during the opening gala of the event in Germany.

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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

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

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

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

Dreams (Sex Love) by Norway’s Dag Johan Haugerud awarded Golden Bear, while Living the Land earns China’s Huo Meng director prize in Berlin.

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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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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.

Margaret Qualley (left) and Ethan Hawke in a still from Blue Moon, directed by Richard Linklater. Photo: Sabrina Lantos/Sony Pictures
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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Jayden Cheung in a still from Queerpanorama. Photo: Good Sin Production
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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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.

Jessica Chastain in a still from Dreams, directed by Michel Franco and co-starring Isaac Hernández. Photo: Teorema
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.

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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Katy O’Brian (left) and Kristen Stewart in a still from Love Lies Bleeding. Photo: Anna Kooris
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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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.

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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Thinley Lhamo in a still from Shambhala. Photo: Aditya Basnet/Shooney Films
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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Adam Sandler (left) and the spider-like Hanus (voiced by Paul Dano) in a still from Spaceman, directed by Johan Renckand and co-starring Carey Mulligan. The movie premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival 2024. Photo: Netflix
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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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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Isabelle Huppert in a still from A Traveler’s Needs. Photo: Jeonwonsa Film Co
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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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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