Powerful documentaries stand alongside highly personal essay films, while works of fiction draw on pared-down plots or surrealist exuberance in equal measure. Whether narrow analogue formats or digital scans, 80s video footage or hand-coloured images from cinema’s early years: the 28 films that make up the 53rd Berlinale Forum main programme celebrate the diversity of cinematic forms, approaches and narratives, and explore the predicaments of the past and the present in unflinching fashion.