Every new festival director has to have something fresh to bring to the table. Chatrian had Encounters. Now Tricia Tuttle, previously with BFI London Film Festival, is in charge, and she’s brought in Perspectives, dedicated exclusively to first-time features. Beforehand, Tallinn’s First Feature competition was the only debut-only programme offered by an A-List festival. Now Berlinale wants to spotlight the next breed of filmmakers with their own specific section. As Journey Into Cinema is all about new and exciting cinema, we have jumped all over Perspectives and have provided as many capsule takes as possible. Let’s see if this section is more than just Critics’ Week rejects.
Growing Down by Bálint Dániel Sós (2025)
The Hungarian Growing Down is the kind of small, unassuming and slyly brilliant movie that I see all the time at festivals with a Central and Eastern European focus such as Cottbus or goEast, maybe Tallinn. Central and Eastern European movies from up-and-coming directors can struggle to play at A-List festivals, so if Perspectives is Berlinale’s chance to highlight more movies from this often-underserved region, then perhaps this already proves the worth of the section.
Shot in a tight 4:3 format, making great use of light and shadow and fog as well as wonderfully forbidding Brutalist architecture, Growing Down is extremely effective in the way it poses one movie — a tight thriller about the cover-up of a crime — before slowly segueing into another; a slow-burn black comedy about the perils of fatherhood. I don’t actually want to spoil a thing here, because this screenplay — evidently refined over time with clever details in the first act paying off by the end — is filled with wonderful twists and turns.
And it’s expertly interpreted by a stellar cast, including Szabolcs Hajdu as a father who despises his son’s anger but slowly shows us where the young boy got that awful temper from. Some moments are obvious and cool (the car wash scene) while others are deeply inspired (the chair lift scene). A great debut to spotlight — an even better justification of creating a new programme.
The Devil Smokes (and Saves the Burnt Matches in the Same Box) by Ernesto Martínez Bucio (2025)
If you want to make a movie about five kids who are all under 14 years old, it helps for them to have defining characteristics. Otherwise, your film quickly devolves into a mush of confusion. The bad direction of children is complemented by chaotic handheld camerawork, a complete lack of forward propulsion and a lack of any interesting metaphors. And the devil (probably) is less of a real force than an idea, barely fleshed out to make any sort of meaningful impact. This match is damp from the start.
Punching the World by Constanze Klaue (2025)
Perhaps continuing the theme that many of these Perspectives films could’ve played at Cottbus, Punching the World is literally set in Lausatia, the region caught between Germany and Poland that’s home to the Sorbian people, the only indigenous Slavic ethnic group in Germany. Set in 2006 — notable for being the year Germany opened even further up by hosting the World Cup, but with the legacy of the GDR still firmly in the rearview mirror — Klaue’s perceptive debut cleverly tracks a line between EU expansion and the current right-wing horrorshow the nation finds itself in today. Depicting the fortunes of two brothers as they grow up in poverty in remote Saxony, its use of clichéd coming-of-age tropes (I’m allergic to cycling through wheatfields, sorry) and lacklustre editing is thankfully compensated by a canny understanding of the way xenophobia and racism fills the hole of absent fatherhood and poor economic circumstances. A much-needed antidote to Das Licht (Tom Tykwer, 2025).
Redmond is the editor-in-chief of Journey Into Cinema.