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
Tag: Iran
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.
Parsing the Puzzling Persian of Universal Language
Matthew Rankin’s culture-bending comedy fable throws up all kinds of intellectual questions, but rarely engages on a deeper, emotional level.
Critical Zone Fails to Hold Interest
A stoner comedy without the comedy; an arthouse drama without the art; a deep dive into social ills without going too deep; Critical Zone is inessential.
Empty Nets. Empty Catch.
Love fights the forces of economics and corruption in the underwhelming Iranian drama Empty Nets — live from Karlovy Vary Film Festival.
Berlinale 2023 Perspektive Deutsches Kino: German Soft Power
The explicitly German section of the Berlinale, Perspektive Deutsches Kino is a fascinating example of film festival soft power diplomacy.
Further Adventures in the Panorama Section: Women Strike Back
The patriarchy pushed them to the edge. These three films from the Berlinale Panorama section show how women can fight back.
Mehran Tamadon Skillfully Recreates Iranian Prison in Where God is Not
The horrors of Iranian prison are horrifyingly revisited in this powerful, draining documentary film, asking if cinema has the power to change the state.