The Berlin Film Festival opens Thursday with Afghan director Shahrbanoo Sadat’s No Good Men in which she also stars as the protagonist female camera operator battling sexism in Kabul in the weeks leading up to the withdrawal of U.S. troops in August 2021.
Festival Director Tricia Tuttle first connected with Sadat during her 10-year-stint at the London Film Festival which programmed her first two films Wolf and Sheep and The Orphanage.
“With our opening night, we want to surprise. I think it’s always good to try to do something different every year,” she says. “I really loved her first two films. She screened them in London, first when I was deputy, and then when I was director. The new film is very different. It’s a political film, but also really affects the heart. I think audiences are going to respond to it.”
Sadat and her family were among some 120,000 people deemed at risk under the impending Taliban rule and airlifted out of Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport amid chaotic scenes in August 2021. She is now living in Germany.
Asked if the choice of No Good Men is also a rebuttal of rising anti-immigrant sentiment in Germany and wider Europe, Tuttle replies: “It is that in a way but it’s not directly about that. I mean we love that it’s a film that gives a very beautiful human face to the experience of someone who’s living in exile not by choice, but because they had to leave. It’s very touching. It reminded me again of my own responsibility to see people as individuals who might need my help.”
“She has also made it with the refugee community, so there is also that, but I certainly don’t want it to feel like medicine for our audience, because it’s not that kind of film. I expect people to be touched and to laugh. It’s also about using our platform to lift-up an interesting filmmaker whose film could have a tough time in the marketplace. We can give her our spotlight.”
Balance & Market Connection
The idea of supporting cinema at every level is a leitmotif running through the selection pulled together by Tuttle and her programmers this year. Tuttle says one of her priorities for her second edition at the helm was to beef up the variety of films being showcased as well as ensure that the selection was cohesive with the European Film Market (EFM)
“One of the things I always loved about the Berlinale is that balance between different types of cinemas. I think we’ve achieved that this year, especially in the competition,” she says.
She points to the variety of genres mingled in with drama in the competition lineup including animation with A New Dawn by Yoshitoshi Shinomiya, western with Wolfram by Warwick Thornton, thrillers such as Dust by Anke Blondé and Josephine by Beth de Araújo and horror with Nightborn by Hanna Bergholm.
“With each of the 22 films, every one of the filmmakers is doing something that is elevated and worthy of being considered deeply and being reviewed. They are working at the top of their game, but each of them is doing something different.”
Tuttle hopes that the selection will work with both the Berlinale audience and the buyers and sellers attending the European Film Market.
“We want the two parts of the Berlinale’s brain to work for coherently, that is the European Film Market and the public facing side,” she says, noting that while both poles of the event are flourishing in terms of attendance, with the festival selling a record 336,000 tickets in 2025, they had become “a little separated from one another” in recent years.
“You can’t make it happen but this year there are lots of interesting films that are for sale in the market. I heard from buyers last year that while they loved the quality of the program it was harder for them. I hope there are some films here that they might find it easier to creative and reach audiences with.”
She points to Belgian thriller Dust as a title with crossover potential while, since this interview, Josephine has started to pick up sales heat following its double Grand Jury and Audience Award prizes at Sundance.
Beyond sales, Tuttle is also thinking about the current challenges facing indie distribution and exhibition sector. “What I’d love to see happen is some solution-based thinking about supporting independent cinemas and trying to incentivize cinemas to play good European films and to keep them on for longer,” she says.
The competition also features directors who in recent years have been more likely to debut their work in Cannes and/ Venice such as Karim Ainouz with Rosebush Pruning, Kornél Mundruczó with At The Sea, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s new feature Soumsoum, The Night Of The Stars and Thornton with Wolfram.
“Many of them also screened in Berlin too. We’ve got good relationships with them and it’s nice they feel they can come back. I know they love our audiences and I think the energy that we brought to the festival last year also helped.”
There was chatter on film forums in the wake of the lineup announcement in January that some of the more high-profile Golden Bear contenders had been turned down by Cannes and Venice.
Questioned on this, Tuttle replies: “We don’t know what other festivals see or don’t see. We have been considering films which made our final programme since March 2025.”
Another talking point is the dearth of studio and starry elevated U.S. indie titles debuting at the festival, dashing hopes up that soon-to-be-released pictures like Warner Bros.’ The Bride! With Jessie Buckley, A24’s The Drama with Zendaya and Robert Pattinson and Amazon MGM Studios’ Project Hail Mary with Ryan Gosling and Sandra Hüller might land at the festival.
Tuttle says the Berlinale has great relationships with the studios but suggests their reluctance to showcase big titles at the festival is part of a wider trend.
“I actually think this is something you’re going to see more of… some of the biggest films of the year like Sinners, One Battle After Another and even Marty Supreme, which is not a studio film but had a private screening in New York, did not premiere in festivals and launched straight into the marketplace.
“I don’t think we’re alone in this. We knock on the door of Netflix, Amazon, Universal and Disney, and we’ve got really good relationships with them but no matter what the festival is, it only works if the dates are close to the planned international release.”
Searchlight Pictures is working with the festival. In the same way that the Berlinale last year hosted the German premiere for A Complete Unknown, which saw its star Timothée Chalamet hit the red carpet in a baby pink ensemble, the festival will welcome Mona Fastvold’s Venice title The Testament Of Anne Lee with Amanda Seyfried.
“I love Mona and Amanda Seyfried has a relationship with the festival. She has been lots of time before,” says Tuttle of the actress, who was last in Berlin with Atom Egoyan’s Seven Veils in 2024. “We’re also going to screen a 70mm print which I am excited about.”
There will be plenty of other action on the red carpet with Michelle Yeoh attending as the Honorary Golden Bear guest of honor while other stars due in Berlin include Pamela Anderson and Callum Turner (Rosebush Pruning), Ethan Hawke (The Weight), Bella Ramsay (Starry Dancer), Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan (Josephine), John Turturro (The Only Living Pickpocket in New York) and Charli xcx (The Moment) among many others.
Calmer Mood
Outside of the film program and market, the general mood going into the festival feels calmer than in recent years even if the outside world is increasingly politically turbulent.
Fears over the rise of Germany’s far-right AfD party, which hung over the festival last year due to a federal election on the final weekend in which it was expected to make big gains, are not at the forefront of concerns this year.
The AfD went onto take a record 20% of the national vote but did not make big inroads in Berlin. Tuttle acknowledges that while not an immediate fear, the general rise of far-right politics bubbles as a concern in the background.
“That’s not something we’re thinking about right now even if it’s a very real threat in every single country in the world where you see a rising populist right and things could change overnight,” she says.
The fallout from the row over the 2024 winner No Other Land, amid tensions over the Israel-Hamas War in Gaza and the hostage crisis, which prompted claims of antisemitism on one side, and a boycott by Arab filmmakers on the other, also appears to have subsided for now.
“We’ve done a lot of work reaching out to people before the festival. We had conversations behind the scenes. The biggest fear was around being silenced… and I think we’ve taken some of the inflammation out of the conversation. This is a horrific conflict that has affected people all over the world but it’s important for us that directors feel the Berlinale is a place where they can come and show their work and not be silenced or censored,” says Tuttle.
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