The Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) turns 75 this year. Its 2025 edition begins on February 13, screening over 200 films in 11 sections across cinemas in Berlin through February 23. We have identified the 18 science or technology-related films in this year’s lineup, with descriptions quoted from the festival program below.
Highlights include Bong Joon Ho’s eagerly anticipated MICKEY 17, his first film since 2019’s PARASITE, which won Best Picture at the Academy Awards. An adaptation of Edward Ashton’s 2022 science fiction novel Mickey 7, the film stars Robert Pattinson as a disposable clone worker assigned tasks deemed too dangerous for human beings. The film opens theatrically in the United States on March 7.
COMPETITION
IF I HAD LEGS I'D KICK YOU. Dir. Mary Bronstein. International Premiere. “With her life crashing down around her, Linda attempts to navigate her child’s mysterious illness, her absent husband, a missing person and an increasingly hostile relationship with her therapist.”
BERLINALE SPECIAL
HELDIN. Dir. Petra Volpe. World Premiere. “Floria, a nurse, works with great dedication and professionalism on the surgical ward of a Swiss hospital. She never puts a foot wrong . . . But then she makes a disastrous mistake and the shift threatens to run completely off the rails. A nerve-racking race against time begins.”
HONEY BUNCH. Dirs. Madeleine Sims-Fewer, Dusty Mancinelli. World Premiere. “After an accident, Diana suffers from crippling pain and memory loss. Homer, her devoted husband, takes her to a remote trauma clinic where she is promised that she will make a full recovery with the help of an innovative therapy. . . but the more treatments she undergoes, the less like herself she begins to feel.”
Still from HONEY BUNCH. Courtesy of Berlinale.
MICKEY 17. Dir. Bong Joon Ho. German Premiere. “The unlikely hero, Mickey Barnes, has found himself in the extraordinary circumstance of working for an employer who demands the ultimate commitment to the job … to die, for a living.”
PERSPECTIVES
HOW TO BE NORMAL AND THE ODDNESS OF THE OTHER WORLD. Dir. Florian Pochlatko. World Premiere. “Freshly released from a psychiatric hospital, Pia moves back in with her parents to rebuild her life. In a world that feels as unsteady as herself, she juggles jobs, heartbreak, her meds and social stigma as she searches for equilibrium.”
PANORAMA
ONCE AGAIN... (STATUES NEVER DIE). Dir. Isaac Julien. World Premiere. “The film explores the storied relationship between chemist Dr. Albert C. Barnes, an early US collector and exhibitor of African cultural artifacts, and the renowned philosopher and cultural critic Alain Locke, known as the ‘Father of the Harlem Renaissance’.”
PAUL. Dir. Denis Côté. World Premiere. “Paul struggles with depression and social anxiety. . . Seeking safety and security, he embarks on an unusual job: doing housework for dominant women. As the submissive ‘Cleaning Simp Paul’, he succeeds in breaking out of his angst-ridden routine. Obsessed with his Instagram profile, Paul retreats into a self-prescribed, virtual therapeutic fantasy.”
PANORAMA – EPISODIC
OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY. Dirs. Dustin Loose, Kaspar Munk. World Premiere. “Young lawyer Sven Lebert and his boss Dr. Bernd Hausner expand this scheme to private investors in Germany, developing a global network of banks, lawyers, and investors that steal billions from European citizens.”
GENERATION
SPACE CADET. Dir. Eric San aka Kid Koala. World Premiere. “When the young astronaut Celeste launches into space on her first solo mission, the guardian robot that has accompanied her throughout her childhood is left by himself to wonder: what now? SPACE CADET is a futuristic lullaby about finding your place in the universe.”
THE BOTANIST. Dir. Jing Yi. World Premiere. “In a remote village on the northern border of Xinjiang, China, a lonely Kazakh boy finds solace in the company of plants. As he searches for traces of lost time, he gradually immerses himself in a dreamlike allegory of the botanical world.”
Still from THE BOTANIST. Courtesy of Berlinale.
GENERATION - SHORT-LENGTH
BENEATH WHICH RIVERS FLOW. Dir. Ali Yahya. World Premiere. “In the marshlands of southern Iraq, Ibrahim feels like a stranger in the world. His sole companion is his faithful buffalo. But a looming environmental catastrophe threatens the only life he knows and the one living being he truly understands.”
BERLINALE SHORTS
AFTER COLOSSUS. Dir. Timoteus Anggawan Kusno. International Premiere. “In the chaotic aftermath following the collapse of Indonesia’s dictatorship, a team of researchers discovers a forgotten archive revealing a covert operation that manipulated dreams and memories.”
HOW ARE YOU? Dirs. Caroline Poggi, Jonathan Vinel. World Premiere. “A group of animals live on a wild coastline and try to heal the ills caused by the contemporary world. A kind of rehab.”
CITIZEN-INMATE. Dir. Hesam Eslami. World Premiere. “The electronic monitoring has transformed Tehran into a digital panopticon, turning the nightmare of constant surveillance and control into reality. But what happens when the roles are reversed and the focus is turned on the surveillants?”
LIVING STONES. Dir. Jakob Ladányi Jancsó. World Premiere. “A rehabilitation center far from the city. Natasa is struggling to trust her much older therapist. She finds some solace in horse therapy. But a chasm is opening up between healing and harm.”
LLOYD WONG, UNFINISHED. Dir. Lesley Loksi Chan. World Premiere. “In the 1990s, Chinese-Canadian artist Lloyd Wong began a video work about his living with HIV. It remained unfinished. Thirty years after his death, filmmaker Lesley Loksi Chan discovers and edits the material.”
THEIR EYES. Dir. Nicolas Gourault. World Premiere. “Clickworkers in Venezuela, Kenya and the Philippines talk about their working day: they edit and label countless images of traffic on US streets to be used as training material for self-driving cars.”
Still from THEIR EYES. Courtesy of Berlinale.
FORUM
IRACEMA. Dirs. Jorge Bodanzky, Orlando Senna. World Premiere of Restoration. “A young Indigenous woman leaves the village for the city. Cinema Novo, hybrid fiction, road trip and an ecological avant-garde perspective, Iracema shows that trees, animals and people were already being destroyed by extractivist capitalism 50 years ago.”
WHAT’S NEXT? Dir. Cao Yiwen. World Premiere. “Made by one woman with the help of an AI image generator, this animation dreams up a world before and after the arrival of evil. With no dialogue and a meditative soundtrack, it embraces the kitsch and utter strangeness of images hallucinated by machines.”
FORUM EXPANDED
COBALT. Dir. Petna Ndaliko Katondolo. “Mikuba takes us to the cobalt veins of Kolwezi, where the battle for a green energy future is fought in dust and heat. As Mama Leonece navigates the labyrinth of multinational giants, she faces a harsh reality that guides her towards ancestral wisdom.”
SPECIAL OPERATION. Dir. Oleksiy Radynski. World Premiere. “When the Russian troops occupied Ukraine’s Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, their activities were documented by CCTV cameras. SPECIAL OPERATION is based on that footage, recorded at the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history.”
FORUM EXPANDED - SHORT-LENGTH AND MID LENGTH
MOUNTAIN ROARS. Dirs. Chonchanok Thanatteepwong, Pobwarat Maprasob. World Premiere. “As mountains shift and echoes from explosions rumble in the distance, mysteries lie hidden in every corner of caves, streams, and trees. A mysterious light appears as a young man and woman try to piece together the story of this place.”
Still from MOUNTAIN ROARS. Courtesy of Berlinale.
PHOTOSYNTHESIZING DEAD IN WAREHOUSE. Dir. Jeamin Cha. International Premiere. “In a vacant house, scenes of decaying fruit in a box are interspersed with correspondence from a researcher studying the kusōzu, Buddhist paintings that depict the nine stages of a decaying corpse, associated with the practice of realizing impermanence.”
PORTALS. Dir. Elena Duque. World Premiere. “PORTALS follows the course of the Guadalete river in Cádiz, Spain: a catalogue of landscapes that hide other landscapes. A collection of inter-dimensional portals (and postcards). Live action and animation fuse, creating an impossible fauna and flora.”
Still from PORTALS. Courtesy of Berlinale.
WILFRED BUCK’S WAR STORIES. Dirs. Lisa Jackson, The Macronauts. World Premiere. “Guided by the wisdom of Ininew astronomer Wilfred Buck, this immersive experience shares four Cree star stories, exploring the cosmos to teach us how to live a good life with future generations in mind.”
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