2025 | Meet the Sections | Forum Expanded
Forum Expanded: Methods of Translucence

The selected works of Forum Expanded

Sinking Suns by Neda Saeedi
AUT, DEU 2024, Forum Expanded
© Neda Saeedi

Alternatives Denkmal für Deutschland (ADfD) | Alternative Monument for Germany by Alternative Monument
DEU 2024, Forum Expanded
© Alternative Monument

Pidikwe | Rumble by Caroline Monnet
CAN 2025, Forum Expanded
© Caroline Monnet

Spetsialna Operatsiia | Special Operation by Oleksiy Radynski
UKR, LTU 2025, Forum Expanded
© Oleksiy Radynski

Mirage: Eigenstate by Riar Rizaldi
IDN, GBR, PRT 2024, Forum Expanded
© New Pessimism Studio

Extra Life (and Decay) by Stéphanie Lagarde
NLD, FRA 2025, Forum Expanded
© Stéphanie Lagarde

Akher Youm | The Last Day by Mahmoud Ibrahim
EGY 2024, Forum Expanded
© Mahmoud Ibrahim

Al Basateen | The Orchards by Antoine Chapon
FRA 2025, Forum Expanded
© Petit Chaos

beneath the placid lake by Kush Badhwar, Vyjayanthi Rao
IND, FIN 2025, Forum Expanded
© waydk

Cartas do Absurdo | Letters from Absurd by Gabraz Sanna
BRA 2025, Forum Expanded
© Eu morri em 1999

Chang Gyeong by Jangwook Lee
KOR 2025, Forum Expanded
© Jangwook Lee

J-N-N by Ginan Seidl
DEU 2025, Forum Expanded
© Ginan Seidl

Mikuba | Cobalt by Petna Ndaliko Katondolo
COD, USA 2025, Forum Expanded
© Alkebu Film Productions

Miraculous Accident by Assaf Gruber
DEU, AUT 2025, Forum Expanded
© CASKFILMS

Mountain Roars by Chonchanok Thanatteepwong, Pobwarat Maprasob
THA 2025, Forum Expanded
© Chonchanok Thanatteepwong/Pobwarat Maprasob

Mua besoj më shpëtoj portreti | I believe the portrait saved me by Alban Muja
Kosovo, NLD 2025, Forum Expanded
© 038 Studio

Photosynthesizing Dead in Warehouse by Jeamin Cha
KOR 2024, Forum Expanded
© Jeamin Cha

Portales | Portals by Elena Duque
ESP 2025, Forum Expanded
© Rocío Mesa

RAPTURE by Alisa Berger
FRA, DEU 2025, Forum Expanded
© Alisa Berger

STARS by STARS Collective
GBR, DEU 2025, Forum Expanded
© Mojisola Adebayo

Tin City by Feargal Ward
IRL 2024, Forum Expanded
© FSE films

When the Sun Is Eaten (Chi’bal K’iin) by Kevin Jerome Everson
USA 2025, Forum Expanded
© Kevin Jerome Everson / trilobite-arts DAC / Picture Palace Pictures

Wilfred Buck’s Star Stories by Lisa Jackson, The Macronauts
CAN 2024, Forum Expanded
© Door Number 3 Productions/Parafilms

Zizi (ou oração da jaca fabulosa) | Zizi (or Praying to a Fabulous Tree) by Felipe M. Bragança
BRA 2025, Forum Expanded
© DUAS MARIOLA FILMES
Forum Expanded is the Berlinale’s section for experimental film, artist’s moving image and expanded cinematic forms, such as video and film installations. In its programmes, the section explores the often unusual ways, in which artists working in these fields engage with the urgent topics of our time.
This year, in its anniversary 20th edition, Forum Expanded presents 24 works from 21 countries in film programmes and exhibitions under the theme “Methods of Translucence”. The selected works tackle a wide range of current issues and discourses, such as today’s many ongoing wars and conflicts, the still existing legacies of colonialism, extractivism, social inequalities as well as the entanglement of personal and collective histories. Their approaches frequently hinge on intervention rather than observation. Be it through tinted glass, virtual reality, historical speculation, or sonic augmentation: their works actively project ideas, images and sounds that alter how we perceive reality and refract our view of the world. They make what is missing even more tangible by redirecting our gaze and throw what lies beyond or outside of our perception into ever sharper relief as a result.
Neda Saeedi does this, for example, in her overhead projector installation Sinking Suns, a forebodingly beautiful array of colourful light projections which reminds us that sunsets are at their most spectacular when the air is most polluted.
The augmented reality installation Alternative Monument for Germany inserts a virtual monument to migration in Germany into the public sphere which far too seldomly recognises the contributions of migrants to German society.
Caroline Monnet’s Pidikwe follows a similar strategy: The dance film speculates about an alternative history of art, which includes, rather than excludes female Indigenous voices.

Spetsialna Operatsiia (Special Operation) by Oleksiy Radynski
For his film Spetsialna Operatsiia, Oleksiy Radynski uses CCTV footage of the occupation of Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant by the Russian army and adds a reduced soundtrack void of human voices to create an eerie, disembodied examination of military logic.
Mirage: Eigenstate appropriates the style of Carl Sagan’s classic TV programme Cosmos to displace the dominance of Western science and embrace pluralistic worldviews – from tropical Sufi mysticism and monorealism to theories of quantum mechanics.
Stéphanie Lagarde refracts our view into manyfold perspectives in Extra Life (And Decay): A polyphonic narrator – filmmaker, parent, forest, insects, fungi, childcare worker – declares their absolute refusal of labour exploitation, and their necessity to join collective bodies in resistance.