Berlinale 2026: Fourteen Must-See Films From This Edition

The 76th edition of the Berlin Film Festival promises a range of stars from Amy Adams to Juliette Binoche to Elle Fanning. Standouts from the recently concluded Sundance Film Festival such as Josephine and Filipiñana pop up in the lineup. Wim Wenders serves as jury president on the main competition that sees 22 productions from 28 countries. Nine films were directed or co-directed by women. The diverse lineup includes the anime feature debut by Yoshitoshi Shinomiya, A New Dawn, as well as an American documentary by Anna Fitch and Banker White about female friendship called YO Love is a Rebellious Bird.

Michelle Yeoh will be bestowed the honorary Golden Bear. The opening film is award-winning Afghan director Shahrbanoo Sadat’s No Good Men.

Ahead of the 2026 edition that runs 12 to 22 February, here are fourteen films to look out for:

German auteur Angela Schanelec returns to Berlin Competition after her previous two films, I Was At Home, But (2019) and Music (2023), won Silver Bears for best director and screenplay respectively. Her latest is about a crane operator, who finds his wife crying after a car accident. She tries to tell him everything, but he withdraws into himself. With an austere elliptical style, Schanelec is part of the Berlin School, alongside Christian Petzold and Thomas Arsalan, the most radically experimental of them.

Premiering in the Panorama section, Sarmad Sultan Khoosat’s much-awaited dark comedy centres on Zeba (Mamya Shajaffar), newly married under the shadow of an unnerving reputation. After her three suitors mysteriously drop dead, she navigates marriage with Sajawal (Channan Hanif), a man hiding trauma, whose paranoia and envy slowly dominates the relationship. Joyland (2022) director Saim Sadiq has both cast and edited the tensely uncanny psychological drama. Lali also marks the first all-Pakistani production at the festival.

Anthony Chen’s latest film is the first from Singapore to compete in Berlinale Competition, wrapping his ‘Growing Up’ trilogy that began with Cannes 2013 Camera d’Or winner Ilo Ilo and was followed by 2019’s Wet Season. Spanning three years, We Are All Strangers explores unconventional surrogate relationships through a 21-year-old man and his modest father, who must redefine their family when a woman enters their lives. Yeo Yann Yann and Koh Jia Ler reteam with Chen after starring in the first two films.

Premiering in Competition, Kornél Mundruczó’s latest stars Amy Adams as a woman returning home after a long stint in rehab, forced to reckon with the silent impacts that sobriety has on her life and the lives of those around her. The film comes from the director of Pieces of a Woman, the film that pushed Vanessa Kirby to an Oscar nomination in 2021 after a Volpi Best Actress win at the Venice Film Festival.

Karuththadaiyaan, who starred in the acclaimed drama Koozhangal (2021) leads the ensemble cast of debutant R. Gowtham’s film. Members of the Problematic Family circles the chaos spiralling around a funeral, swerving between comedy and tragedy. This is the first time a debut feature by a director from Tamil Nadu has been chosen for the Berlinale Forum. It is the fourth Tamil feature film ever to be screened in the section, following Mani Ratnam’s Alaipayuthey (2001), Ameer’s Paruthiveeran (2008), and PS Vinothraj’s Kottukkaali (2024).

Oscar-nominated Anatomy of a Fall (2023) star Sandra Hüller features in this 17th-century drama. Set in the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War, the film follows an enigmatic soldier who returns to a secluded German village and claims to be the heir of a long-abandoned farmstead, all the while pretending to be a man. It’s Hüller’s first outing in a stacked year that has Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Digger and Paweł Pawlikowski’s 1949. Rose is the third feature by Austrian director and actor Markus Schleinzer screening in the main Competition.

After back-to-back Cannes Competition premieres Firebrand (2023) and Motel Destino (2024), Brazilian filmmaker Karim Aïnouz arrives in Berlin competition with his highly anticipated starry family satire, Rosebush Pruning. When Jack (Jamie Bell), the eldest brother and family lynchpin, announces he is moving in with his girlfriend (Elle Fanning), blood ties are severed and Ed starts to uncover the truth surrounding their mother’s death. Generational lies tumble out, and the fabric of this family slowly begins to disintegrate. Aïnouz is directing from a script written by long-time Yorgos Lanthimos collaborator Efthimis Filippou (Kinds of Kindness, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, The Lobster), which is inspired by Marco Bellocchio’s 1965 drama Fists in the Pocket.

Yellow Letters follows Ilker Catak’s Oscar-nominated The Teachers’ Lounge, which played in Berlin’s Panorama in 2023. The political drama is about a celebrated artist couple from Turkey whose marriage is pushed to snapping point when they are targeted by the state. It zooms on authoritarian pressure clamping down on private lives and intimate decisions.

Premiering in Generation Kplus Competition, the film marks Rima Das’ return to the festival after Bulbul Can Sing (2018) and Village Rockstars 2 (2024). Set across urban and rural landscapes, Not a Hero traces the journey of a young boy navigating an unfamiliar world that quietly reshapes his understanding of strength, masculinity and belonging.

Hanna Bergholm’s debut feature horror Hatching launched at Sundance in 2022 and won three of Finland’s Jussi Awards. In Berlinale Competition, her sophomore Nightborn is another genre piece, a bloody dark fable following a Finnish woman and her British husband as they move to an isolated house deep in the forest to have their first child—only for the mother to realise immediately that something is wrong with the boy. The film is Bergholm’s first English ­language feature, while also using Finnish dialogue.

Dao marks a return to Berlinale Competition for the French-Senegalese director Alain Gomis, who previously won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize for Félicité (2017). Adapted from his own novel, the film unfolds around a Parisian wedding overshadowed by grief, as the sudden death of a family member in Guinea-Bissau exposes emotional fractures and unresolved histories.

The ninth film from French-Chadian filmmaker Mahamat-Saleh Haroun teases to be a beguiling drama. Playing in the Competition, the film follows the journey of Kellou, a teenager troubled with haunting visions. After meeting Aya, her understanding of these gifts sharpens. Their sisterhood weathers village hostility. More fantastical than Haroun’s previous film, the tremendous Lingui, The Sacred Bonds (2021), there's high intrigue around this alluring title set in the stunning Ennedi desert in Chad.

A rising voice in German cinema, Eva Trobisch vaults into Berlin Competition with her third film, after All Good won best first feature at Locarno in 2018 and 2024’s Ivo played in Berlin’s Encounters. Home Stories centres on a 16-year-old girl who embarks on a search for identity within and beyond her family’s hotel in the forests of the former East Germany.

The drama, made underground by Iranian director Mahnaz Mohammadi, revolves around a teacher imprisoned for her political beliefs and facing the choice of making a forced televised confession, or remaining confined to her three-square-metre cell. Mohammadi has faced the ire of Iran’s regime over the past two decades.