Politics Meets Escapist Thrills at the 2026 Berlinale

Politics meets escapist thrills at the 2026 Berlinale

An Afghan feature opens the Berlin International Film Festival, while stars including Pamela Anderson, Ethan Hawke and John Turturro are expected on the red carpet.

Berlin Head Tricia Tuttle Talks Building A Selection That Chimes With The Market: “We Want The Two Parts Of The Berlinale’s Brain To Work Coherently”

The Berlin Film Festival opens Thursday with Afghan director Shahrbanoo Sadat’s No Good Men in which she also stars as the protagonist female camera operator battling sexism in Kabul in the weeks leading up to the withdrawal of U.S. troops in August 2021. Festival Director Tricia Tuttle first connected with Sadat during her 10-year-stint at the London Film Festival which programmed her first two films Wolf and Sheep and The Orphanage. “With …

‘Sandiwara’ Trailer: Sean Baker Directs Michelle Yeoh in Multiple Roles for Berlin-Bound Short

Ever since Sean Baker’s historic night at the Academy Awards in 2025 — when he won Oscars for Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, Best Editing, and Best Picture for “Anora” — cinephiles have been waiting to see what he would direct next. Now we have our answer, as Baker now takes a new short film to Berlin. Written and directed by Baker and produced by the London fashion house Self-Portrait, “Sandiwara” stars Michelle Yeoh in a slice of lif…

Joko Anwar on Using Horror-Comedy to Expose Systemic Rot in Berlin-Bound ‘Ghost in the Cell’: ‘Laughter Should Come With Discomfort’

The ghost in Joko Anwar’s “Ghost in the Cell” doesn’t haunt – it holds accountable. Indonesian filmmaker Anwar used his Berlinale Forum entry “Ghost in the Cell” to channel societal anxieties about systemic corruption and environmental destruction through supernatural horror, creating a prison-set thriller that treats its genre elements as political instruments rather than escapist […]

Jimmy and Stiggs review – skull-numbingly silly alien-invasion splatterpunk yarn

Joe Begos’s gross-out aims for sensory assault but delivers only visual noise, numbing gore and a weary joke stretched far beyond enduranceThis is a DayGlo-hued, heavy metal-spackled horror film that clearly hopes to provoke nausea in viewers with its abundant scenes of dismemberment and plentiful use of shaky-cam first-person point-of-view footage. But given that the “blood” being spurted out is mostly bright orange and belongs to extraordinari…

Khoroog Amen Brings an Egyptian Psychological Thriller to Berlin

Khoroog Amen (Safe Exit), the new feature by Egyptian director Mohamed Hammad, will premiere on 12 February 2026 in the Panorama section of the 76th Berlin International Film Festival, joining a notable slate of Arab works screening in Berlin this year. The film stars Marwan Walid, alongside Noha Fouad and Hazem Essam, and is a co-production between Egypt, Qatar, Libya, Tunisia, and Germany. With international backing, the project lies within a …