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What's Next?

Innovative, idiosyncratic, experimental and unconventional: The films of the Forum

2024 (2023) by Stefan Hayn
DEU 2025, Forum
© Stefan Hayn

Davit Beybutyan
After Dreaming by Christine Haroutounian
ARM, USA, MEX 2025, Forum
© Mankazar Film

Yael Eisenberg
Batim | Houses by Veronica Nicole Tetelbaum
ISR, DEU 2025, Forum
© Yaniv Linton

Han Ye-ri, Kim Seol-jin
Bombam | Spring Night by Kang Mi-ja
KOR 2024, Forum
© Cinema DAL

Cadet by Adilkhan Yerzhanov
KAZ 2024, Forum
© Cadet

Canone effimero by Gianluca De Serio, Massimiliano De Serio
ITA 2025, Forum

Chas pidlotu | Time to the Target by Vitaly Mansky
LVA, CZE, UKR 2025, Forum
© Chas pidlotu

Nayibe Tavares-Abel
Colosal | Colossal by Nayibe Tavares-Abel
DOM 2025, Forum
© Cinema Costanera / Media Jibara

Evidence by Lee Anne Schmitt
USA 2025, Forum
© Lee Anne Schmitt

Das falsche Wort | The Lie by Katrin Seybold, Melanie Spitta
BRD 1987, Forum
© Filmmuseum München

Melissa Gan, Emmanuelle Mattana
Fwends by Sophie Somerville
AUS 2025, Forum
© Excellent Friends & Future Success PTY LTD

Guochang | Fruit Farm by Nana Xu
DEU, CHN 2025, Forum
© Nana Xu

Yehuda Beinin
Holding Liat by Brandon Kramer
USA 2025, Forum
Meridian Hill Pictures © 2025

Edna de Cássia
Iracema, uma transa amazônica | Iracema by Jorge Bodanzky, Orlando Senna
BRA, BRD 1975, Forum
© Archive Jorge Bodanzky IMS

Janine Lear
Janine zieht aufs Land | Janine Moves to the Country by Jan Eilhardt
DEU 2025, Forum
© Eilhardt Productions

Lenn Kudrjawizki
Der Kuss des Grashüpfers | The Kiss of the Grasshopper by Elmar Imanov
DEU, LUX, ITA 2025, Forum
© Borris Kehl

little boy by James Benning
USA 2025, Forum
© James Benning, 2025. Courtesy the artist and neugerriemschneider, Berlin

Vibeke Løkkeberg
The Long Road to the Director’s Chair by Vibeke Løkkeberg
NOR 2025, Forum
© bpk/Abisag Tüllmann

La memoria de las mariposas | The Memory of Butterflies by Tatiana Fuentes Sadowski
PER, PRT 2025, Forum
© Miti Films / Community of Puerto Millán-La Chorrera

Tamara Stepanyan in the film "Games"
Mes fantômes arméniens | My Armenian Phantoms by Tamara Stepanyan
FRA, ARM, QAT 2025, Forum
© Edgar Baghdassaryan

Aline Amike
Minimals in a Titanic World by Philbert Aimé Mbabazi Sharangabo
RWA, DEU, CMR 2025, Forum
© Imitana Productions

Sabina Bakaeva
Nagota | Nudity by Sabina Bakaeva
UZB, FRA 2025, Forum
© Sabina Bakaeva, Tashkent Film School, Ateliers Varan

Palliativstation | Palliative Care Unit by Philipp Döring
DEU 2025, Forum
© Philipp Döring

Celeste Torres, Maritza Kategari
Punku by J.D. Fernández Molero
PER, ESP 2025, Forum
© J.D. Fernández Molero

Queer as Punk by Yihwen Chen
MYS, IDN 2025, Forum
© Queer As Punk

Milan Kovačević, Vera Hrćan Ostojić
Restitucija, ili, San i java stare garde | Eighty Plus by Želimir Žilnik
SRB, SVN 2025, Forum
© Playground produkcija

Scars of a Putsch by Nathalie Borgers
AUT, BEL 2025, Forum
© Coskun Aral

The Sense of Violence by Kim Mooyoung
KOR 2024, Forum
© Mooyoung Kim

Shinagani gazapkhulebis q’vaviloba | Inner Blooming Springs by Tiku Kobiashvili
GEO 2025, Forum
© Tiku Kobiashvili

SIRENS CALL by Miri Ian Gossing, Lina Sieckmann, Miri Ian Gossing & Lina Sieckmann
DEU, NLD 2025, Forum
© GossingSieckmann / filmfaust / Kochmann

Monika Schurmann
Stolz & Eigensinn | Pride & Attitude by Gerd Kroske
DEU 2025, Forum
© realistfilm

Viachaslau Kmit
The Swan Song of Fedor Ozerov by Yuri Semashko
LTU, DEU 2025, Forum
© Yuri Semashko

Kurt Hsiao
The Trio Hall by Su Hui-yu
TWN 2025, Forum
© Jing Moving Image

Underground by Kaori Oda
JPN 2024, Forum
© 2024 trixta

Unsere Zeit wird kommen | Our Time Will Come by Ivette Löcker
AUT 2025, Forum
© Courtesy sixpackfilm

Dileesh Pothan, Achyut Kumar
Vaghachipani | Tiger’s Pond by Natesh Hegde
IND, SGP 2025, Forum
© Flip Films - Kadalivana

Siena Popović, Jessica Paar
Wenn du Angst hast nimmst du dein Herz in den Mund und lächelst | If You Are Afraid You Put Your Heart into Your Mouth and Smile by Marie Luise Lehner
AUT 2025, Forum
© Nikolaus Geyrhalter Filmproduktion

What’s next? by Cao Yiwen
HKG/CHN 2025, Forum
© Cao Yiwen

When Lightning Flashes Over the Sea by Eva Neymann
DEU, UKR 2025, Forum
© Blue Monticola Film
The Forum is and remains the section for innovative, idiosyncratic, experimental and unconventional forms of cinematic expression. It offers auteurs and independent artistic works a forum (nomen est omen) beyond the cultural Bermuda Triangle of commerce, spectacle and escapism. The 31 films in the main programme, which enter into dialogue with the eight films in the “Open Wounds, Open Words” Forum Special, aim to expand the idea of what cinema was and is, and what a festival can be. The texts about the selected films and the conversations and discussions before and after the screenings are at the core of the Forum’s programming and our concept of the section. Together with the filmmakers and audiences, we want to voyage to the edges of the familiar and open up perspectives from which film culture – including that of the past and, prospectively, the future – can be understood afresh and placed into a new relationship with the world around us.
This year, the Forum’s films come from six continents and face a world and its people that are in a bad way. They encounter wounded souls trapped between ice-cold systems and brutal regimes, seeking warmth and kinship – from Cadet, a hard-hitting work about a cadet school in Kazakhstan that combines the post-horror genre with the post-Soviet present, to the queer Janine, who experiences tenderness but also hostility in the German countryside (Janine zieht aufs Land (Janine Moves to the Country)) and SIRENS CALL, a breathtakingly experimental sci-fi documentary road trip that follows the merfolk subculture.

SIRENS CALL by Miri Ian Gossing and Lina Sieckmann
Alongside this hybrid feature film debut, there are a remarkable six other feature-length fiction and four documentary debuts in the Forum’s main programme this year. They include the atmospherically rich and sensually affecting Minimals in a Titanic World, which takes us into the Rwandan club scene, the Australian female buddy movie Fwends and the Austrian Wenn du Angst hast nimmst du dein Herz in den Mund und lächelst (If You Are Afraid You Put Your Heart into Your Mouth and Smile). Under the title of “young and brave”, three fresh and critical student works in the Forum Special’s short film programme reveal what it means to start making films in politically, socially and economically vulnerable places. The works are complemented by the panel discussion “The Way Home – Speaking Openly. The Young Generation and Filmmaking in Georgia and Uzbekistan”.

Eighty Plus by Želimir Žilnik
Staying true to another of the Forum’s traditions, documentary forms make up around half of the programme. They take us from Saxony and Franconia, Berlin and Vienna, via war-torn Lviv (Chas pidlotu (Time to the Target)) and Odessa to a Turkey of the 1980s dominated by the military, the oral cultures of the Italian regions and environmental clean-up areas and neo-conservative think tanks in the USA. They turn the camera on South Korean anti-communist imagery and Armenian cinematic landscapes, Japanese cave refuges, the Malaysian queer punk scene, the ballot boxes of the Dominican Republic and the rubber plantations of colonial Peru. These films, as well as the Forum Special, reveal the (often unrealised) emancipatory potential of younger generations, both in the past and today. But the old guard is also represented: in his latest essay film little boy, James Benning looks back into the past to warn about the future. And we have the Golden Bear winner from 1969, Želimir Žilnik, whose docu-fiction is simply called Restitucija, ili, San i java stare garde (Eighty-Plus).
Exploring the diversity of cinematic forms, the 55th Forum presents contemporary film as a rekindling of humanity, an interrogation of the status quo and a seismograph of our time – satires on dictators and reflections on AI included. What’s Next?