Cornelia Brelowski: Berlin in February? One Word – Berlinale

The days are getting longer and yes, we will get some light from a source which will help us bridge the city’s coldest month – the Berlinale.

Most Berliners are off on winter vacation for the first week in February – taking their family to artificially created snow fields for skiing or simply fishing for stronger sunlight in the south of Europe.

What however do the Berliners do as of February, week two? Well, they are lucky because for all the icy winds there is the Berlinale film festival. Invented in 1951 in post-war Berlin, this year it is to be hosted by Tricia Tuttle of London Film Festival fame.

Tricia Tuttle, Berlinale 2025 Festival Director. Photo: Richard Hübner

The Berlinale consists of much more than the Competition, and for example hosts a European film market, a new Co-pro Series section, the Special, the Forum, the Forum Expanded, the Panorama and the Generation segment. This year’s Berlinale ‘Special’ features screening galas which – among others – will present the new sci-fi film Mickey 17 by cult director Bong Joon-ho starring Robert Pattinson, and The Thing with Feathers, by director Dylan Southern – an adaptation of the novel by Max Porter with Benedict Cumberbatch.

The filmmakers chosen for this year’s ‘Panorama’ program develop versatile cinematic strategies to “name the unspoken, to capture the unimaginable or the forgotten”. ‘Perspectives’ meanwhile is a new section dedicated to discovering and supporting exceptional debut feature films from around the world and will be launched in 2025. Apropos exceptional debuts: Did you know that Jean-Luc Godard’s A Bout de Souffle got the Silver Bear in 1960?

Berlinale Golden and Silver Bear awards. © Dirk Michael Deckbar

Anyone still interested in the competition? What I should (and can, at this point) tell you is, that the festival will be opening with German star director Tom Tykwer (Lola rennt, Babylon Berlin, Cloud Atlas), who will open the film festival with his new drama The Light. And it is the lights what we seek in February most of all, indulging in the red carpet, the film gala nights as much as in the broad and diverse international palette of film-makers spreading across the various Berlinale sections, who otherwise would probably have a hard time to find an adequate platform, ever. ‘Berlinale Talents’ for example will feature “cinematic narratives in times of dissonance”. It is, after all, the festivals’ democratic mission to give hitherto overlooked names a spotlight shining as bright as the Golden Bear award.

From February 13th until February 23rd, the city will be humming with film enthusiasts, actors and actresses, directors and producers who value the festival as what it is: One of the European ‘Big Three’, with the special democratic merit of being a pure spectators’ festival, created for, literally, everyone.

Tilda Swinton, Berlinale Honorary Bear award 2025. Photo: Brigitte Lacombe

Meanwhile, longtime Berlinale fan Tilda Swinton will receive the 2025 Honorary Bear. She attended the festival for the first time in 1986 with her first film Caravaggio, directed by the late Derek Jarman and has since worked on over 26 films that have been shown here. Well, the Berliners can only say: Thank you Tilda, from the heart.

Photo: Coline Mattée