Berlinale Forum & Forum Expanded

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.

After many years of meaningful contribution to Forum Expanded, Ala Younis will be stepping down from her position as co-head of the Berlinale section. She will continue her work in art, curatorial, publishing, and research projects. Ulrich Ziemons remains the section’s head.

In addition to the Silver and Golden Bears, various independent juries award prizes at the Berlinale. Forum and Forum Expanded films received several awards.

This year's Caligari film prize goes to SHAHID by Narges Kalhor. She receives the prize for a  "complex, multi-voiced work" that leads us "into the depths of one's own biography and the collective past."

The 30 films in the main programme of the 54^th Forum show how political awareness and cinematic form are connected, the diverse ways in which world knowledge can be experienced and why the most determined women are often to be found in the most remote corners of the globe.

Beth B's film SALVATION! was shown at the Forum in 1987. In our podcast series "Arsenal 60ff. — Film Talks from 5 Decades", we are publishing the audience discussion with Beth B, the main actor Stephen McHattie and the passionate Berlin film audience, moderated by Ulrich Gregor.

We are opening our audio archive with the podcast "Arsenal 60ff". The audience discussions during the Berlinale Forum are legendary – enthusiastic and often entertaining. We are presenting a selection and contextualizing them in conversations with experts.

Big changes are coming for Berlinale Forum: Cristina Nord is leaving as the Forum head, Barbara Wurm is taking over. In our podcast we are talking to the two of them together about what is special about the Berlinale Forum and where it is heading, but also looking back on four exciting and challenging years.

Assem Hendawi’s Film SIMIA: STRATAGEM FOR UNDESTINING in this year’s Forum Expanded programme uses a speculative AI to think about alternative futures. In our podcast we talked to him about robots telling dad jokes and why Samuel Beckett is the ultimate a human ChatGPT.

The representation of violence, suffering, disease or physical changes confront filmmakers with ethical and aesthetical questions. Esther Buss sketches out the relationship between corporeality and language in five documentaries showing at the 53rd Berlinale Forum.  

“No matter where you go, the screen is always white.” Julian Ross on Takahiko Iimura’s short stay in Berlin, that shaped his artistic practice in film and video in a transitional moment of his career.