Exploring the Auteur: A Closer Look at Bong Joon-ho, Richard Linklater, and Radu Jude's Films at Berlinale 2025

After announcing its sidebar titles in batches this past month, the Berlin International Film Festival has revealed the full line-ups for its highest-profile sections. At a press conference held today at the city’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt, the Competition, Perspectives and the complete Berlinale Special features were unveiled.

The festival is embarking on a new chapter under its recently appointed Festival Director Tricia Tuttle, after the previous team headed by Mariette Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian departed last year under a cloud of controversy. The fears of censorship in contemporary Germany over support for Palestine has likely affected this year’s line-up, with reports of a number of filmmakers opting out, and a smaller overall presence of Middle Eastern directors across its various sections.

Chatrian, who held the Artistic Director position, faced some industry pushback on the relative absence of sales-friendly titles in his curation, as well as the prominent platform for the experimental Encounters section. Yet for the loyal press corps, his cinephile sensibility brought the most vibrant editions in years, with the 2021 pandemic-era slate particularly one to remember.

Tuttle’s selection so far mimics the best of the previous management, looking at the promising and gender-balanced competition selection, and its retaining of several Chatrian favourites. The new, competitive Perspectives sidebar for debuts is an unknown quantity with its unfamiliar names, but we can be confident the films have been chosen for a reason, with first features studding so much of Panorama, Forum and Generation.

The Berlinale has always been discovery-oriented, privileging directors who are completely unknown before the festival, but end it as new stars of the industry. Still, there are eye-catching world premieres in store, which always create a strong impetus for attending year after year: Bong Joon-ho’sMickey 17, his long-awaited and much-delayed follow-up toParasite; Richard Linklater’sBlue Moon, another collaboration with his muse Ethan Hawke; and Radu Jude’sKontinental’25, a homage to Rossellini’sEuropa ’51, and one of two new features he has ready this year.

The three sections confirmed today are below:

Competition:

The Safe House - Lionel Baier

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You - Mary Bronstein

Reflection in a Dead Diamond - Hélène Cattet/Bruno Forzani

Yunan - Ameer Fakher Eldin

Dreams - Michel Franco

The Message - Iván Fund

Timestamp - Kateryna Gornostai

The Ice Tower - Lucile Hadžihalilović

What Marielle Knows - Frédéric Hambalek

Dreams (Sex Love) - Dag Johan Haugerud

What Does that Nature Say to You - Hong Sangsoo

The Blue Trail - Gabriel Mascaro

Mother’s Baby - Johanna Moder

Living The Land - Huo Meng

Kontinental ’25 - Radu Jude

Hot Milk - Rebecca Lenkiewicz

Blue Moon - Richard Linklater

Girls On Wire - Vivian Qu

Ari - Léonor Serraille

Perspectives:

That Summer In Paris - Valentine Cadic

Eel - Chu Chun-Teng

Shadowbox - Tanushree Das/Saumyananda Sahi

Where the Night Stands Still - Liryc Dela Cruz

Little Trouble Girls - Urška Djukić 

We Believe You - Arnaud Dufeys/Charlotte Devillers

BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions - Kahlil Joseph

Punching The World - Constanze Klaue

Two Times João Liberada - Paula Tomás Marques

The Devil Smokes (and Saves the Burnt Matches in the Same Box) - Ernesto Martinez Bucio

How to Be Normal and the Oddness of the Other World - Florian Pochlatko

The Settlement - Mohamed Rashad

Growing Down - Bálint Dániel Sós

Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo) - Joel Alfonso Vargas

Berlinale Special Gala:

The Light - Tom Tykwer (opening film)

Mickey 17 - Bong Joon-ho

After This Death - Lucio Castro

Köln 75 - Ido Fluk

Islands - Jan-Ole Gerster

The Narrow Road to the Deep North - Justin Kurzel

A Complete Unknown - James Mangold

Lurker - Alex Russell

The Thing With Feathers - Dylan Southern

Late Shift - Petra Volpe

Berlinale Special:

Shoah - Claude Lanzmann

My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow - Julia Loktev

The Old Woman With The Knife - Min Kyu-dong

Ancestral Visions of the Future - Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese

The Best Mother in the World - Anna Muylaert

No Beast. So Fierce. - Burhan Qurbani

Leibniz – Chronicle of a Lost Painting - Edgar Reitz/Anatol Schuster

All I Had Was Nothingness - Guillaume Ribot

A Letter To David - Tom Shoval

Honey Bunch - Madeleine Sims-Fewer/Dusty Mancinelli

Das Deutsche Volk - Marcin Wierzchowski

Friendship’s Death - Peter Wollen (Honorary Golden Bear for Tilda Swinton)