Berlinale Feb. 3-23, 2025

In the past, I have occasionally examined and commented on the Berlin International Film Festival, most recently the year before last: Berlinale 2023, the fourth year under Chatrian & Rissenbeek.

Two or three weeks ago, the 75th edition of the Berlinale ended, which was also the first with Tricia Tuttle as director. Tuttle, whose name made me think of the 1985 film BRAZIL, directed the London Film Festival from 2018-22. She is US-American, but has lived in Europe for over twenty-five years now.

The Berlinale Competition 2025

Prologue: The opening film

One of the first messages I received about the 2025 festival – this was last December – was about the opening film THE LIGHT, which screened out of competition at the Berlinale. Tricia Tuttle (source Berlinale.de) said:

“When we saw THE LIGHT, we knew immediately that we wanted to open the 75th Berlinale with it Tom Tykwer finds beauty and joy in our often fragile and challenging world. He magically captures the essence of our lives today on screen. We look forward to welcoming Tom Tykwer back to the festival with THE LIGHT.”

I wrote about this on Insta on December 5:

Just read the press release from the Berlinale Press Office: the film THE LIGHT by Tom Tykwer will open the 75th Berlinale next February.
A quick 6-trade check gives a rosy picture, so far no woman in the core team, but editing is still pending.
The ‘typical’ female costume design also went to a man: Pierre-Yves Gayraud.
If the fulfillment of #2of6 had already been a condition for public funding (2 of the 6 trades must involve women), the €5.84 million could not have been awarded.
But as it is, congratulations.
By the way: IMDB lists more than 100 film people for this production under visual effects!
And by the way II: If 5 of the 5 departments had been given to women, this would certainly be a topic in all the reports. But the other way around? (original post in German)

In the meantime, the ‘real’ editors have also been added to the Berlinale website: Claus Wehlisch and Alexander Berner. The film sound editor position is not listed, but the sound design was handled by Mathias Lempert, Frank Kruse and Alexander Buck. The producers were Uwe Schott and Tom Tykwer, and Tim Tamke was responsible for the production design. I’ll add Alexandra Montag (casting) and Nicolette Krebitz (first-named role), so that it doesn’t remain completely monorosa.

I didn’t care much for Tom Tykwer‘s last productions, the TV series BABYLON BERLIN (see Babylon Testosterone, Generously Funded. 18.7.21 and Two German Series: BABYLON BERLIN and CLASH OF THE FUTURES. 15.11.2018). Hence, I was not surprised by either the results of the  6-deaprtments-check or the predominantly negative reviews I read about DAS LICHT. Tricia Tuttle‘s assessment – ‘It magically captures the essence of our lives today on screen.’ – was not shared. Valérie Catil, for example, writes for the Goethe Institute (in German, Feb. 25):

The problem (…) is that the Syrian woman, Farrah*, ultimately remains a mere projection surface: Her story is instrumentalised to show the Germans that they are actually not doing so badly. (…) Farrah is not allowed to become a real character with dimensions. She is mysterious, flat, good at heart. She remains a catalyst, she remains the magical Syrian. Until the end, because in the end it is not only Farrah who heals the Engels family – it is also the Engels who ‘save’ them.
*the family’s housekeeper

Film critic Sophie Charlotte Rieger sheds light on another aspect in her Filmlöwin article Berlinale 2025: Motherhood on and off the screen from 27 February (in German):

I first encounter the third mother at the festival kick-off, when I watch the unsuccessful opening film THE LIGHT. I’m almost driven mad by the way Tom Tykwer shows a mother who has completely alienated herself from her children due to her professional self-realisation – yes, that’s right, the classic working ‘raven mother’. At least Tykwer gives his character a therapy session (…). But shortly afterwards, I again see the ‘raven mother’ absorbed in her job as she walks past her children with her mobile phone to her ear, while the film never takes a critical look at her equally busy and distracted husband’s fatherhood. Thanks for nothing, Tom Tykwer. A sensitivity reading would have worked wonders. Feel free to get in touch next time!

There is neither a sensitivity reader nor a dramaturgist or script consultant in the long crew lists at IMDB and crew united. Perhaps this is a bit astonishing because Tom Tykwer told Silke Mehring in an interview with regional public broadcaster rbb on 14 February 2020: ‘I have a lot of ideas, but sometimes they backfire, so I really need opposition.’

He could have sought opposition from Sophie Charlotte Rieger, for example, or from the German dramaturgy association VeDRA.

I only heard really positive things about DAS LICHT from one filmmaker who was enthusiastic about the images – in other words, Christian Almesberger’s work.

But now to the competition:

The competition in figures

Stories

Unfortunately I haven’t seen the films, I only know the synopses from the Berlinale website, and I noticed the strong personal focus there. That makes them timeless in a way, but I wonder if that’s such a good thing. Films (and series) from the Corona era always have the absence of masks and contact restrictions in common – aren’t these relevant topics? – and even in the current films, the characters – in contrast to my personal experience – are little affected by the wars, crises, catastrophes and changes in this world. But as I said, I haven’t seen the competition films, maybe it’s different there. However, Hanns-Georg Rodeck gives little hope for this in the world:

‘You get the impression in general that this Berlinale has nothing concrete to say about the pressing problems. A single competition film – Zeitstempel (STRICHKA CHASU) shows how schools in the Ukraine endeavour to continue teaching despite the constant threat. The remaining 18 films in the competition either delve into the past or tell of deeply private sensitivities.
Hanns-Georg Rodeck / Die Welt, 20.2.25 (in German)

Producing countries

A total of 26 countries were involved in the production of the 19 competing films. The table shows the figures for 2025 and those from 2020 to 2023 from my article mentioned at the beginning:

There are four films with more than three production countries in 2025:

• YUNAN (Germany, Canada, Italy, Palestine, Qatar, Jordan, Saudi Arabia)
• REFLET DANS UN DIAMONT MORT / Reflection of a dead Diamond (Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy, France)
• STRICHKA CHASU / Timestamp (Ukraine, Luxembourg, Netherlands, France)
• O ÚLTIMO AZUL / The Blue Trail (Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Netherlands).

This influences the overall statistics somewhat. As you can see, the three South American production countries were involved in one and the same film – O ÚLTIMO AZUL – and four of the six Asian countries were involved in YUNAN.

Unfortunately, there is once again no Japanese entry in the competition. And none from India either – but if I remember correctly, no Bollywood film is ever invited to the competition. Why not? Thematically, one would certainly have fitted, and artistically it would have added more colours.

Six-Departments-Check

The proportion of women in the directing and screenwriting categories is almost 40%. The 19 competition entries were directed by 8 female and 12 male directors, REFLET DANS UN DIAMONT MORT by a couple, Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani.

Seven screenplays were written by female authors, two by author/author duos. In 13 films, the same person is responsible for the direction and screenplay, in 5 films the director was involved in the screenplay. This means that there is only one film in which these two positions were separate: BLUE MOON (directed by Richard Linklaker, screenplay by Robert Kaplow).

No female director worked with a female cinematographer, why? The only female cinematographer in the Competition, Cecile Semec, filmed the Golden Bear winner DRøMMER by Dag Johann Haugerud (director and screenplay) from Norway.

As mentioned, the Berlinale has the position of sound designer but not sound editor, which is why I took the former for the evaluation. This explains the ‘high’ proportion of women in the sound department (21.1%) compared to other 6-dipartment-checks.

Female editors only occupied a quarter of the positions.

For music, I only found the composers for 12 films (e.g. on the Berlinale website, at IMDB and crew united), the share of women is just under 20%. The three female composers worked alone on DRøMMER (Anna Berg) and YUNAN (Suad Bushnag), and with others on LA CACHE (Diego Baldenweg, Nora Baldenweg, Lionel Baldenweg).

#2of6

#2of6 is a construct that I invented to increase the share of women for the six core departments of directing, screenwriting, cinematography, sound, editing and music as quickly and easily as possible. The condition is that at least two of these trades – 2 out of 6 – must have female participation in order to… Well, that’s the question. A film funding organisation or an editorial team could make it a sine qua non (after all, public money is often involved), but a festival could also make it a guideline and at least make it a topic in the film selection.

As you can see, more than half of the films fulfil the #2of6 requirement, namely 10 out of 19. It should be 100%, but 50% is better than nothing. Oh well.

The interesting thing is that six films, almost a third, even reach 3 out of 6, including two films by male directors, DRøMMER and LA CACHE. Both had (female first-named roles and) involved women in the majority of the other 5 departments. Something that does not apply to any of the films by female directors.

	Director	Script	DoP	Sound Design	Montage	Music
LA CACHE	Lionel Baier	Catherine Charrier, Lionel Baier	Patrick Lindemaier	Raphaël Sohier	Pauline Gaillard	Diego Baldenweg, Nora Baldenweg, Lionel Baldenweg
DRøMMER	Dag Johann Haugerud	Dag Johann Haugerud	Cecile Semec	Gisle Tveito, Yvonne Stenberg	Jens Christian Fodstad	Anna Berg

People who have seen the films or compared them in this respect can discuss the extent to which the presence or absence of film women in the core trades affects the cinematic result. And how it may have affected the work on set is something we would have to ask those involved.

Age of director and first-named roles

With a manageable group of 19 films, age analyses are not so time-consuming, which is why we can look at the years of birth for the directors and actors of the first-named roles in 5-year groups in the next two figures.
(NB: given age numbers refer to the age on 1 January 2025, not at the start of production).

As far as the directors go, we can notice a relatively even age distribution of both genders – which stands in clear contrast to the directors’ ages in Germany’s top TV movie TATORT / crime scene, for example, where younger women and older men are recognisable as groups. See TATORT: The Remains of the Year.

The average age for female directors is 47.1 years, for male directors 48.3 years.

Roughly half – namely nine, three women and six men – were born between 1976 and 1985, so they are now between 40 and 50 years old. Four are younger, six older. The oldest female director was born on 7 May 1961 – Lucile Hadzihailovic (LA TOUR DE GLACE), she is one year younger than the two oldest directors: the American Richard Linklaker (BLUE MOON) and the South Korean Hong Sang-soo (GEU JAYEONI NEGE MWORAGO HANI). The youngest director, Ameer Fakher Eldin from Syria (YUNAN), was born in 1991 and is or will be 34 this year, while the youngest female director, Ukrainian Kateryna Gornostaj (STRICHKA CHASU), turned 36 a week ago.

And if you look closely, you’ll see that only seven instead of eight female directors appear; I couldn’t find any information on Vivian Qu, and that’s her right.

For the 18 feature films, the Berlinale website lists 12 female and 6 male roles in first place, i.e. a two-thirds share of women. The average age of the first-named is 44.4 years for women and 43.0 years for men. As already mentioned, the 19th film was a documentary.

The six male roles are distributed fairly evenly across the age range from 10 (Wang Shang in SHENG XI ZHI DI) to 83 (Fabio Testi in REFLET DANS UN DIAMONT MORT).

Two thirds of the actresses are 44 or older. With 6 roles, the focus is on the years 1971-1980, i.e. 45 to 55-year-olds. There are two first-time female leads over 60: Dominique Reymond (67) in LA CACHE and Denise Weinberg (68) in O ÚLTIMO AZUL. The youngest leading actress is Ella Øverbye (20) in DRøMMER. Once again, I’ve only analysed the first-named roles here; DRøMMER, for example, centres on a granddaughter and her grandmother, and there’s also the mother.

Regardless of the content, as you know I haven’t seen the competition entries yet, I find it pleasing for a change that both genders show a large age variability and similar average ages. Years ago, when I analysed the German Top 100 German cinema films, the first-named female roles were mostly children and teenagers. (I’m currently working on an analysis of the top 100 German cinema films of 2022, 2023 and 2024 – let’s see if I can also include age in this).

Epilogue

These were just some statistics, but at least it paints a more colourful picture than many an older festival year. And as far as the burning issues of our time are concerned, they were perhaps dealt with more in other sections of this year’s film festival.

The next, then 76th Berlinale will probably take place in February 2026, I’m guessing from 12 to 22 February.