Wresting Meaning from the World

What cinema can be: a journey back to the world 4,000 years ago and a look at tomorrow. Films that only speak in images and those that bear eloquent testimony in words. Room for feelings, for sadness and love, for anger and rebellion. And the ever-recurring question: How can we support each other when it really matters?

As the Berlinale’s section for young audiences, Generation presents a programme dedicated to the perspectives of young people which aims to create a space for their hopes and dreams, for facing challenges and crossing thresholds, for the opportunity to connect with the world together. It is worth your while to explore the entire range of the Generation programme. For this purpose, young cineastes can benefit from the newly introduced Generation Badge – 14plus which grants access to all Generation screenings during the festival. Below, we present a short tour of the selection.

A dream of cinema as a form of self-assertion: in Ne réveillez pas l’enfant qui dort (Don’t Wake the Sleeping Child), Diamant dreams about living life as a filmmaker. When her parents have other plans for her, she evades them by refusing to wake up. In Little Rebels Cinema Club, Doddy introduces his friends to the magic of the cinema as a space that keeps memories alive and as a tool for giving shape to one’s own fears and longings.

Cinema as a place that makes us rethink our relationship with nature and animals: Only on Earth looks at climate change from the perspective of the Spanish wild horses whose habitat is threatened by forest fires every year. Beneath Which Rivers Flow takes us to a marshland in Iraq where Ibrahim and his closest companion, a water buffalo, find themselves in a world that is growing increasingly alien. In the cinema, animals return our gaze and present us with a different image of ourselves.

Cinema as a place that can provide solace: in Têtes brûlées, twelve-year-old Eya has to come to terms with the death of her beloved brother and finds support in her faith, her family and the solidarity of her friends with whose help she transforms grief into an act of resilience. The cosmic musical fairy tale Space Cadet depicts the connective power of shared memories: although the astronaut Celeste and the robot that has accompanied her throughout her childhood now face their own separate challenges, they discover that what they mean to each other endures. Cinema creates space for emotions of all kinds.

And cinema, last but not least, as a place that allows us to experience the importance of community. In Our Wildest Days, for example, a young woman learns what it can mean to join up with others in order to try and defy the adversities of the world together. In On a Sunday at Eleven, a young Black ballerina immerses herself in a dreamy, visually opulent and empowering community of Black women. In the cinema, we are always less alone.

The 2025 programme of Generation

Selection Committees Generation 75th Berlinale:

Feature-length film
Ygor Gama, Qila Gill, Susana Borges Gomes, Carmen Gray, Ina Karkani, Seggen Mikael, Natascha Noack, Carlos Pereira, Anas Sareen, Canan Turan
Short film
David Assmann, Jey Baholzer, Naomi Bechert, Monica Koshka-Stein, Marija Milovanović