From oddball animation to Asian coming-of-age stories to big tech’s uncanny valley, we look at ten shorts from the Berlinale Shorts programme.
Berlinale Shorts 2025 Part One: Dreams and Nightmares
Redmond Bacon
Redmond is the editor-in-chief of Journey Into Cinema.
Berlinale Shorts 2025 Part Two: Humanity And the Lack Thereof
The second half of the Berlinale Shorts goes deep on the emotions, with stunning love story Close to September easily the standout movie.
in retrospect Expertly Captures German Xenophobia
in retrospect explores the double-standards of Germany’s immigration policies: inviting people to come then demonising them for coming.
Hot Milk Loses It At The Beach
Lesbian desire and mother-daughter issues intermix on the beach in Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s debut feature Hot Milk. Playing in Competition.
Spring Night. A Sobering Experience.
Han Ye-ri provides an astonishing portrait of alcoholism in Kang Mi-ja’s deeply affect Spring Night, playing in Forum.
Rosenkrantz and the Real Slow Burn
Listening to Peter Hujar’s Day by Ira Sachs makes you wish you’d trade places with Ivan Denisovich. Live from the Panorama at Berlinale.
The Good Sister. A Great Movie.
The moral difficulty of realising your loved one might be a monster is explored in great detail in Sara Miro Fischer’s The Good Sister.re
Living The Land. Weddings and Funerals.
The rhythms of village life are perceptively captured in Huo Meng’s intimate epic Living the Land, which is handsomely made but holds the audience at a remove.
Das Licht. Bitte Nicht.
Hitherto undiscovered depths of cringe are plumped in Tom Tykwer’s misguided and offensive familial drama Das Licht (The Light), opening Berlinale 2025.
Move the Berlinale To Charlottenburg
The Berlinale is in a vibe crisis. Here’s how moving the festival to Charlottenburg would make it fun again.