Award Winners
Sound of Falling
A remote German farmhouse is the stage for the mundane and magical experiences of four girls who call the foreboding place home at various intervals over the course of a century. In turns delicate and devastating, this is cinema at its most experiential.
Image: © Fabian Gamper
Wind, Talk to Me
In this quietly affecting, deeply personal debut, Stefan Djordjevic subtly but notably occupies both sides of the camera, painting a delicate portrait of a young man processing the loss of his mother.
My Father's Son
Blending sci-fi and family drama, My Father's Son takes us through the past, present, and future of a computer engineer. As a child, Qiao is bullied by his father; in the present, his father is laid to rest; and in the future, he’s resurrected via AI.
Kontinental '25
Radu Jude's Silver Bear winner is an anguished drama of conscience about a bailiff traumatized by an eviction that ends in tragedy. What more could she, or should she, have done?
Lights in the Dusk
At once both funny and sad, Lights in the Dusk repurposes the cinematic language of film noir and gangster flicks to create a wholly singular proletarian satire of late-stage capitalism. This is Kaurismäki at his most angry and most tender.
Bad Girl
From her journey through high school and college, then out into the wider world, Ramya’s dream of finding the perfect guy is obstructed by societal mores, strict parents, unrequited love and the untrammelled chaos of her own mind, in Varsha Bharath’s naughty and affecting comedy.
10: The new socialism; ceasefire now!
Shorts from: Belgium, Canada, China, India, Myanmar, UK.
Silent Friend
On the grounds of a medieval German university town looms an old Ginkgo biloba, which features in three intimate, human-scaled stories. Moving between time periods, this is a singular meditation on how we connect to the natural world.
Resurrection
In this broken-mirror reality, humanity has lost its ability to dream. A Fantasmer proves a puckish outlier, slipping into the dreamworld and being reincarnated over the course of a century, each time from within a different film genre.
Divine Intervention
Palestinian visionary Elia Suleiman is at the height of his powers with this series of deadpan, interconnected, absurdist vignettes about two Palestinian lovers on either side of an Israeli military checkpoint.
