Based on a graphic novel, this dazzling sapphic fable is a whimsical ode to the power of storytelling.
Festival Programme
Films — by Genre
Drama
Chronicles from the Siege
Palestinian-Syrian director Abdallah Alkhatib’s Berlin Film Festival winner is an absurdist, inventive tapestry of tales from a besieged city, where the desires of its citizens become sparks of resistance against oblivion.
Dead Man's Wire
After a seven year hiatus, Gus Van Sant is back behind the camera with this star-studded true-crime thriller, earning an 11-minute standing ovation after its premiere in Venice.
Everytime
A shattering portrait of grief that refuses to play by the rules. This year’s winner of the prestigious Un Certain Regard section at Cannes, Everytime is Austrian filmmaker Sandra Wollner's most precise and emotionally devastating work yet.
Father Mother Sister Brother
Indie cinema’s long-time King of Cool Jim Jarmusch finds mystery and melancholy alike in this triptych of family short stories, each grappling with the weight of shared history.
The Fence
Le cri des gardes
The cover-up of a worker’s death in West Africa and the arrival of the site manager’s young wife are lit matches to a tinderbox in this strange, sinewy thriller of alienation and exploitation.
First Light
A ruthless workplace cover-up by a powerful family throws a nun into existential crisis in this mysterious, meditative drama, beautifully lensed in island greenery and candlelight.
The Good Boy
Heel
When a picture-perfect middle-class family turns out to be dangerously twisted behind closed doors, Jan Komasa's darkly funny psychological thriller asks who really needs ‘fixing’... and how far is too far.
Iván & Hadoum
Ian de la Rosa’s queer romance asks how much of yourself can you afford to give when survival is already a struggle, in this Teddy Award winning feature direct from Berlin.
Late Fame
Willem Dafoe and Greta Lee bring heart and realness to this wistful, unromantic comedy about the fragility of creative ambition and a bygone, bohemian New York lost to a consumerist era of gentrification and influencers.
Mysterious Skin
Newly restored, Gen-X icon Gregg Araki’s remarkable, aggressively over-censored coming of age classic grapples with the enduring spectre of child sexual abuse, presenting one of the auteur’s bleakest but most essential visions.
On the Road
En el camino
Danger, desire and an unlikely bond forged on the long roads of Mexico – David Pablos's award-winning thriller is drenched in heat and darkness, with tenderness at its core.
A Sad and Beautiful World
Nujum al'amal w al'alam
Romantic and sharp, this is a story of two souls bound by fate, a country on the brink of collapse, and a love story that refuses to give up on either.
Silent Friend
The plant world lights up alongside Tony Leung Chiu-Wai and Léa Seydoux in this playful, eccentric love letter to scientific experimentation and the beauty of noticing life in all things.
The Voice of Hind Rajab
Ṣawt Hind Rajab رجب هند صوت
With the last words of a five-year-old girl, Kaouther Ben Hania's devastating documentary puts a single, unbearable human story at the heart of an ongoing catastrophe.
The Wizard of the Kremlin
Actors Jude Law and Paul Dano star as Putin and his propagandist in an epic political thriller by Olivier Assayas, that shows how brutal repression in Russia is puppet-mastered behind a veil of manufactured illusion.
Yellow Letters
Gelbe Briefe
A celebrated Turkish theatre couple are suddenly targeted by the state and stripped of their livelihoods, leading to their marriage, their ideals and their sense of self being pushed to breaking point. Winner of the Golden Bear (the Berlin Film Festival's top prize), this is a riveting and urgently relevant political drama.