Films from five continents – including seven feature debuts – encounter a world and its people that are not in good shape, wounded souls. Sounding out a diverse range of cinematic forms and political positions, the Forum shows contemporary cinema that moves beyond the cult and the commercial.

In its 20^th edition, Forum Expanded brings together 24 works from 21 countries. Employing practices that span installation, film, video and sculpture, the selected artists and filmmakers employ translucence as a means of engaging with the cataclysmic realities of the present.

The focus of the Forum Special 2025 “Open Wounds, Open Words” is the younger generation and the impact of norms, inequality and injustice—in full awareness of unrealized emancipatory potentials both past and present.

We are deeply concerned to learn of the Berlin Senate’s planned budget cuts in the cultural sector. While Arsenal does receive funding from the Federal Ministry of Culture and Media, we see ourselves indirectly affected by these austerity measures.

After it says goodbye to Potsdamer Platz at the beginning of 2025, Arsenal will kick off a year without its own screens before a new cinema opens in the silent green Kulturquartier of Berlin's Wedding district in early 2026.

There were a number of different reasons for the naming of Kino Arsenal in 1970. One of them was the allusion to the silent film by the Ukrainian director Oleksandr Dovzhenko from 1929. We asked the author and film critic Bert Rebhandl to look at the film again from today's perspective. The result is a comprehensive research and re-examination.