Forum Expanded: Methods of Translucence

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.

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.

All selected works of Forum Expanded

Co-Curators Forum Expanded 2025:

Karina Griffith, Shai Heredia