Today, the Berlinale 2026 selections for the main competition and the Perspectives section were presented by the festival director, Tricia Tuttle, together with co-directors of film programming Jacqueline Lyanga and Michael Stütz.
The list of films in the Berlinale 2026 main competition
- At the Sea Kornél Mundruczó
- Dao – Alain Gomis
- Dust – Anke Blondé
- Etwas ganz Besonderes (Home Stories) – Eva Trobisch
- Everybody digs Bill Evans – Grant Gee
- Gelbe Briefe (Yellow Letters) – İlker Çatak
- Josephine – Beth de Araújo
- Kurtulus (Salvation) – Emin Alper
- The Loneliest Man in Town – Tizza Covi, Rainer Frimmel
- Meiner Frau weint (My Wife Cries) – Angela Schanelec
- Moscas (Flies) – Fernando Eimbcke
- A New Dawn -Yoshitoshi Shinomiya
- Nina Roza – Genevieve Dulude-de Celles
- Queen at Sea – Lance Hammer
- Rosebush Pruning – Karim Aïnouz
- Rose – Markus Schleinzer
- Soumsoum la nuit des astres (Soumsoum, the Night of the Stars) – Mahamat-Saleh
- À voix basse (In a Whisper) – Leyla Bouzid
- We are All Strangers – Anthony Chen
- Wolfram -Warwick Thornton
- YO Love is a Rebellious Bird – Anna Fitch Banker White
- Yön lapsi (Nightborn) – Hanna Bergholm
The list of films in the Perspectives section
17 – Kosara Mitic
Animol – Ashley Walters
Chronicles From the Siege – Abdallah Alkhatib
The River Train – Lorenzo Ferro, Lucas A. Vignale
Filipiñana – Rafael Manuel
Forêt ivre (Forest High) – Manon Cubia
Hangar roja (The Red Hangar) – Juan Pablo Sallato
Der Heimatlose (Trial of Hein) – Kai Stänicke
Nosse segredo (Our Secret) – Grace Passô
A Prayer for the Dying – Dara van Dusen
Take Me Home – Liz Sargent
Truly Naked – Muriel d’Ansembourg
Where To? – Assaf Machnes
The last title, “Where to?”, can also be asked about the festival. In the competition, Mundruczó will face a US production starring Amy Adams. Hanna Bergholm seems to continue the tradition of genre films in the competition with Nightborn, which sounds all too similar to her debut, Hatching (2022). That Angela Schanelec‘s films should be presented anywhere else than in the Berlinale competition seems impossible. This year’s offering is called My Wife Cries. Whether it is because the wife just watched a Schanelec retrospective is not clear.
Otherwise, we find the usual suspects, such as Alain Gomis, Emin Alper, Karim Aïnouz, and others. Over the last three years, my favourite film of the year has come from the Berlinale competition, but it seems like a tricky task to find it in the 2026 edition. Maybe the answer will surprise me, for once. The Perspectives section is more difficult to judge since all the films are first features, but from the descriptions, Filipiñana, Forêt ivre, Hangar rojo, Truly Naked, and Where To? sound particularly interesting.
The Berlinale runs from February 12 to 22, the last day being the Audience Day. As usual, there will be reviews and interviews directly from Berlin provided by The Disapproving Headquarters. The 2026 Berlinale Awards have since been announced.
