Fluent in the Languages of Cinema

Perspectives, the Berlinale’s new first fiction feature competition brings together exceptional international filmmakers, spanning the globe from Austria to Belgium, Egypt, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Italy, Mexico, Portugal, Slovenia, Taiwan and the United States. While the stylistic and thematic diversity is just as wide-ranging, all of these filmmakers reach out to audiences with brave hearts, boundless curiosity and bold ideas.

Valentine Cadic’s Le rendez-vous de l'été (That Summer in Paris) invites the audience to join her lead character on an introspective journey through Paris at the height of the spectacle and chaos of the Summer Olympics.

Chu Chun-Teng’s Hé mán (Eel) is infused with magic realism and history of place that imagines a new way to see the past within the present. Themes of transformation and image-making unfold around identity and gender in Paula Tomás Marques’ film within a film, Duas vezes João Liberada. History, transformation, image-making and new archives of identity spread out across past, present and future in Kahlil Joseph’s BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions.

Coming of age is instigated by unexpected turns of events for the young women of Kaj ti je deklica (Little Trouble Girls), the young brothers of Mit der Faust in die Welt schlagen (Punching the World), and Joel Alfonso Vargas’ teenaged Rico in Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo).

The pressures of work and family collide in Mohamed Rashad’s Al mosta’mera (The Settlement) and Liryc Dela Cruz’s Come la notte (Where the Night Stands Still); two films that are very different stylistically, but equally ambitious.

The trauma and impact of war and mental illness on families is explored with deft tenderness in Tanushree Das and Saumyananda Sahi’s Baksho Bondi (Shadowbox), Ernesto Martinez Bucio’s El Diablo Fuma (The Devil Smokes) and Florian Pochlatko’s How to Be Normal and the Oddness of the Other World.

Similarly, a delicate balance of agony, urgency and compassion fuels the families in Arnaud Dufeys and Charlotte Devillers’ On vous croit (We Believe You) and Bálint Dániel Sós’ Minden Rendben (Growing Down) in these two very precise debuts.

Through their films, these first-time fiction filmmakers make evident that they are fluent in the languages of cinema, have bold ideas and offer new ways of seeing the world. That this is the future of cinema, bodes very well indeed.

This international competitive strand that puts a spotlight on new fiction filmmakers, in partnership with GWFF (Gesellschaft zur Wahrnehmung von Film- und Fernsehrechten), will award 50,000 euros to one film selected by the Perspectives jury for the section’s top prize, courtesy of GWFF.

The 2025 Perspectives programme