New films from Bong Joon-Ho, Tom Tykwer in Berlin 2025 Lineup

New films from Richard Linklater, Michel Franco and Hong Sang-soo are among the competition highlights for the 75th Berlin International Film Festival, the world’s largest public film festival, which unveiled it full lineup today.

Linklater’s Blue Moon, a period drama about the final days of Lorenz Hart, half of the Rodgers & Hart songwriting team, will have its world premiere at the Berlinale, marking Linklater’s fourth time in Berlin competition. At his last go-around, with Boyhood in 2014, he walked away with the Silver Bear for best director. The feature, starring Ethan Hawke, Margaret Qualley, Bobby Cannavale and Andrew Scott, will be released worldwide by Sony Pictures Classics.

Berlinale regular, and four-time Silver Bear winner Hong Sang-soo returns with his latest intimate drama, What Does That Nature Say to You?; and Norwegian director Dag Johan Haugerud, whose feature Sex was an audience favorite at Berlin last year, is back with Dreams, the last feature in his Sex, Love, Dreams trilogy.

Other competition highlights include Hot Milk, the directoral debut of Polish screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz (Ida, Disobedience); Michel Franco’s Dreams, the Mexican helmer’s re-teaming with his Jessica Chastain; and French drama The Ice Tower from director Lucile Hadžihalilović, starring Marion Cotillard, Gaspar Noé, and August Diehl.

Opening the press conference, Tuttle nodded to Berlin’s reputation as the most political of the big festivals.

New films from Bong Joon-Ho, Tom Tykwer in Berlin 2025 Lineup

“People often ask me, and the press often ask me if we’re a political festival, and we cannot, and we do not shy away from this,” Tuttle said. “It’s arguably in the DNA of the city itself and also in the festival itself, but it’s fair to say that the Berlinale is many things, and for all festivals and all culture right now, the news agenda can often dominate the discourse, but we really hope, and we believe, that the films that audiences are going to see over the next over the weeks of the festival are going to get people talking about the vibrancy of the art form itself and the films themselves.”

There are certainly plenty of political talking points in the official lineup, which include the world premieres of Marcin Wierzchowski’s Das Deutsche Volk, a look at the far-right attacks in the German city of Hanau in 2020; Michtav Le’David (A Letter to David) from Israeli director Tom Shoval, a cinematic letter to his friend David Cunio, who was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7th; and My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow, a documentary from U.S. director Julia Loktev, which documents independent journalists in Moscow facing government crackdown as Russia invades Ukraine. All three films will screen in the Berlinale Special program.

Berlin has already announced most of the films screening in its gala sections this year, including Mickey 17, the sci-fi feature starring Robert Pattinson from Parasite director Bong Joon-Ho, which will bow out of competition, and Das Licht, the new film from German helmer Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run, Cloud Atlas), which will open the 2025 Berlinale on Feb. 13.

Berlin’s sidebars are also complete. The full lineup for Panorama — an “explicitly queer, explicitly feminist, explicitly political” section featuring indie arthouse cinema from around the world — as well as for Forum (experimental cinema) and Generation (youth and children’s films) were unveiled earlier this month.

Sidebar highlights include new features from arthouse favorites Ira Sachs (Peter Hujar’s Day), Denis Côté (Paul), and Michel Gondry (Maya, Give Me a Title).

U.S. director Todd Haynes (Carol, Far From Heaven), whose debut feature Poison won the Teddy Award at Berlin in 1991, is president of this year’s international jury which will pick the winners of Berlin’s Gold and Silver Bears.

Berlinale 2025 Competition

Ari, director: Léonor Serraille
France / Belgium (2025)

Blue Moon, director: Richard Linklater

USA / Ireland (2025)

La cache (The Safe House), director: Lionel Baier
Switzerland / Luxembourg / France (2025)

Dreams, director: Michel Franco
Mexico (2025)

Drømmer (Dreams (Sex Love)), director: Dag Johan Haugerud
Norway (2024)

Geu jayeoni nege mworago hani (What Does That Nature Say to You), director: Hong Sangsoo
South Korea (2025)

Hot Milk, director: Rebecca Lenkiewicz

United Kingdom (2025)

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, director: Mary Bronstein
USA (2024)

Kontinental ’25, director: Radu Jude
Romania (2025)

El mensaje (The Message), director: Iván Fund
Argentina / Spain (2025)

Mother’s Baby, director: Johanna Moder
Austria / Switzerland / Germany (2025)

O último azul (The Blue Trail), director: Gabriel Mascaro

Brazil / Mexico / Chile / Netherlands (2025)

Reflet dans un diamant mort (Reflection in a Dead Diamond), directors: Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani
Belgium / Luxembourg / Italy / France (2025)

Sheng xi zhi di (Living the Land), director: Huo Meng
People’s Republic of China (2025)

Strichka chasu (Timestamp), director: Kateryna Gornostai
Ukraine / Luxembourg / Netherlands / France (2025)

La Tour de Glace (The Ice Tower), director: Lucile Hadžihalilović
France / Germany (2025)

Was Marielle weiß (What Marielle Knows), director: Frédéric Hambalek

Germany (2025)

Xiang fei de nv hai (Girls on Wire), director: Vivian Qu
People’s Republic of China (2025)

Yunan, director: Ameer Fakher Eldin
Germany / Canada / Italy / Palestine / Qatar / Jordan / Saudi Arabia (2025)

Berlinale Special 2025

After This Death, director: Lucio Castro
USA (2025)

A Complete Unknown (Like A Complete Unknown), director: James Mangold
USA (2024)

Heldin (Late Shift), director: Petra Volpe
Switzerland / Germany (2025)

Islands, director: Jan-Ole Gerster
Germany (2025)

Köln 75, director: Ido Fluk

Germany / Poland / Belgium (2025)

Das Licht (The Light), director: Tom Tykwer
Germany (2025)

Lurker, director: Alex Russell
USA / Italy (2025)

Mickey 17, director: Bong Joon Ho
USA / South Korea / United Kingdom (2024)

The Thing with Feathers, director: Dylan Southern
United Kingdom (2025)

Ancestral Visions of the Future, director: Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese

France / Lesotho / Germany / Saudi Arabia (2025)

Das Deutsche Volk, director: Marcin Wierzchowski
Germany (2025)

Honey Bunch, directors: Madeleine Sims-Fewer, Dusty Mancinelli
Canada (2025)

Je n’avais que le néant – “Shoah” par Claude Lanzmann (All I Had Was Nothingness), director: Guillaume Ribot
France (2025)

Kein Tier. So Wild. (No Beast. So Fierce.), director: Burhan Qurbani
Germany / Poland / France (2025)

Leibniz – Chronik eines verschollenen Bildes (Leibniz – Chronicle of a Lost Painting), directors: Edgar Reitz, Anatol Schuster

Germany (2025)

A melhor mãe do mundo (The Best Mother in the World | Die beste Mutter der Welt), director: Anna Muylaert
Brazil / Argentina (2025)

Michtav Le’David (A Letter to David), director: Tom Shoval
Israel / USA (2025)

My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow, director: Julia Loktev
USA (2024)

Pa-gwa (The Old Woman with the Knife), director: Min Kyu-dong
South Korea (2025)

Shoah, director: Claude Lanzmann

France (1985)

Friendship’s Death, director: Peter Wollen
United Kingdom (1987)

Berlinale Perspectives 2025

Al Mosta’mera (The Settlement), director: Mohamed Rashad
Egypt / France / Germany / Saudi Arabia / Qatar (2025)

Baksho Bondi (Shadowbox), directors: Tanushree Das, Saumyananda Sahi
India / France / USA / Spain (2025)

BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions, director: Kahlil Joseph

USA (2025)

Come la notte (Where the Night Stands Still), director: Liryc Dela Cruz
Italy / Philippines (2025)

El Diablo Fuma (y guarda las cabezas de los cerillos quemados en la misma caja) (The Devil Smokes (and Saves the Burnt Matches in the Same Box)), director: Ernesto Martinez Bucio
Mexico (2025)