Berlinale is a big beast. Somehow I managed to see almost 40 films this year, despite a whirlwind of interviews to conduct, reviews to file and time-outs to stare, slack-jawed, at yet another omnishambles, after jury president Wim Wenders foolishly claimed that cinema isn’t political and was inexplicably backed in by the festival. Us pesky journalists need to not ask curly questions, apparently – fat chance.
Anyway, here are the 10 films that tickled me most and I encourage you to seek out, as they hopefully head to Australia via a festival, streaming or general release.
Best of Berlinale – quick links
Queen at Sea
Juliette Binoche puts in a performance for the ages in this astonishing, if confronting, London-set family drama from American director Lance Hammer. It opens, arrestingly, with Amanda (Binoche) walking in on her stepfather, Doctor Zhivago star Tom Courtenay’s Martin, having sex with her mum, Leslie (Anna Calder-Marshall), who has advanced dementia. With consent unclear, Amanda panics, calling the police. There are no easy answers in the thorny morality play that follows, my joint Berlinale fave. Watch the trailer.
Rose
Austrian filmmaker Markus Schleinzer’s mesmerising third feature harnesses the unbridled acting power of The Zone of Interest and Anatomy of a Fall star Sandra Hüller. She plays a farmer who’s unwilling to fit in with the gender norms of the 17th century. Assuming the mantle of a fallen comrade while fighting a war dressed as a man, she sets about reviving his rural farm, even marrying a local woman. But can the charade hold in this gorgeously shot, black and white masterpiece, my joint fave at the Berlinale.
Trial of Hein
German filmmaker Kai Stänicke’s startlingly assured debut feature is a strange and beguiling beast. Paul Boche’s austerely internal villager, Hein, returns to the remote, Summerisle-style village he left some 14 years ago, sailing for the freer ways of the mainland. With unfinished business to address, Hein is waylaid by the cloistered community’s refusal to believe he is who he says he is and is placed on trial. Memory itself is on the line, as the muddy waters are stirred in this cracking mystery.
In a Whisper
Tunisian filmmaker Leyla Bouzid unpicks the intergenerational trauma of queer erasure in this radiant family drama. Paris-based Lilia (Eya Bouteraa) returns home for the funeral of her beloved uncle, a closeted gay man. She stays in the family home, wonderfully captured by cinematographer Sébastien Goepfert, while her girlfriend Alice (Marion Barbeau) checks into a hotel. But secrets have a way of bubbling up in this ravishing drama, which also features Hiam Abbas as Lilia’s bristling mother.
Animol
This gripping queer prison drama marks the debut feature of actor-turned-director Ashley Walters, who played the cop in the first episode of Adolescence. It casts a revelatory Tut Nyuot as a young man caught up in a knife crime incident who is sent to a youth detention centre by the sea.
Falling in with Polish lad Krystian (Vladyslav Baliuk), they share great chemistry. But surviving in this forsaken place is no walk in the park in a stylish actors’ piece that rewrites the narrative in appealing ways.
The Moment
Charli XCX has grand comic chops in this The Thick of It-style mockumentary about her dazzling musical success story. Set in the run-up to her Brat tour, she’s saddled with a bunch of gormless hangers-on and Alexander Skarsgård’s condescending prat of a label-mandated filmmaker, Johannes, who has some wildly uncool ideas about shooting the concert film. Mayhem follows as Charli’s self-confidence spirals amid a hullabaloo of competing narratives in this spiky satire serrating celebrity culture.
The Education of Jane Cumming
German filmmaker Sophie Heldman was fascinated by the true story of the 19th century teachers Marianne Woods (Clare Dunne) and Jane Pirie (co-writer Flora Nicholson), who eschewed marriage and formed a girls’ school together. There’s a hint of Portrait of a Lady on Fire about this sanctuary. But when Mia Tharia’s titular character, an Indian-born student related to Fiona Shaw’s imperious Lady Cumming Gordon, complains about their closeness, scandal ensues.
ScreenHub: 10 films to see at the 2026 Europa! Europa Film Festival
Sad Girlz
Mexican filmmaker Fernanda Tovar delicately handles the aftermath of sexual assault as two teenage competitive swimmers, Paula (Danara Alvarez) and La Maestra (Rocio Guzman), struggle to reconcile how to approach the fallout and how it impacts their rock-solid bond. The luminous winner of the Generation 14plus section at the Berlinale does so in a non-didactic way that will nevertheless prove an invaluable conversation-starter for young adults mature enough to consider enthusiastic consent.
The Loneliest Man in Town
If, like me, you can’t get enough of proudly stubborn oldies holding the line against property developers from hell, a la Aquarius, then this delightful, Vienna-set character study will be the stuff of dreams for you too. Co-directors Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel closely follow real-life Blues musician Al Cook as he refuses to leave his apartment block that’s marked for demolition. A quiet film of great emotional depth, The Loneliest Man in Town blurs the lines between truth and fiction in illuminating and spellbinding ways.
Narciso
A burning body chained to a bed is not an image I will soon forget. It roars in Paraguayan filmmaker Marcelo Martinessi’s haunting, noirish biopic, set in Asunción in 1959. Diro Romero’s titular radio star dances suggestive rock and roll for live audiences. Indiscreet with his omnisexuality, steamy affairs with his landlady, boss and the American ambassador (BPM star Nahuel Pérez Biscayart) raise the ire of the dictatorship, an insidious presence mirrored in the station’s staging of Dracula.
