Berlinale 2025 - 75th Anniversary
What we loved at Berlinale Shorts this year
By Curation Hour
The Berlinale Shorts 2025 selection is a testament to cinema’s ability to capture the intricacies of human existence - its tenderness, its trauma, and its transformations. This year’s lineup blends classic narrative with bold experimentation, spanning surrealism, archival storytelling, and cutting-edge animation. Themes of memory, war, digital surveillance, and identity through these films, create a collection that feels both personal and universally resonant.
“This edition is rich in portraits of varying kinds, both in the documentary works and in the fiction and animated films. We encounter individuals who will stay with us for a long time,” says Anna Henckel-Donnersmarck, head of Berlinale Shorts.
As Berlinale celebrates its 75th anniversary, the shorts program also revisits cinematic gems from past editions, reminding us of the festival’s enduring commitment to innovation.
Here’s a selection of our favourites from this year’s programme:
Anba dlo. Directed by Luiza Calagian and Rosa Caldeira
Nadia is a Haitian biologist who had to leave her culture, homeland and the people she loves most to dedicate herself to her research. She moved to Cuba, where she studies the local flora and fauna, so similar to those of her home country. Despite the similarities provided by the Caribbean context, the cultural differences between the two countries run deep, starting with language and religion. Accustomed to Haitian Creole, derived from French, and to Vodou, the Afro-Haitian religion, Nadia has had to learn Spanish to communicate in Cuba and adapt to the traditions of the Afro-Cuban religion, Santería. Her life takes an unexpected turn when a mysterious presence emerges from the depths of the waters, and the forest begins to whisper in unknown languages. This enigmatic visitor is Yvon, her former love from Haiti. It makes her homeland feel more distant than ever for Nadia.
Beacause of U. Directed by Tohé Commaret
Laura, a young woman, is trapped in a toxic relationship with a famous rapper. After a violent argument with him, her reality begins to warp. While wandering in a fantomatic suburb, her isolation becomes both geographical and emotional. Laura struggles with obsessive thoughts and repressed memories, which reveals a form of social anxiety defined by contradictory feelings: a constant fear of missing out and her inability to build healthy relationships. Because of (U) portrays the stories we construct to hide painful truths, the selves imposed on us, and the ways in which we free ourselves from their constraints. The film plays with a documentary approach and elements of magical realism. It explores loneliness and captures the archetypes of romantic relationships, juxtaposing the small and the monumental, the familiar and the distorted, the everyday and the hallucinatory.
Their Eyes. Directed by Nicolas Gourault
How does a machine learn to read the world? In a series of testimonies and screen recordings, clickworkers from the Global South talk about their daily work. Their job is to analyse, edit and label countless images of traffic on the streets of the Global North with the aim of training the AI of self-driving cars to navigate. In transnational chat rooms, the clickworkers imagine micro-strategies to hack the system that is exploiting them.
After Colossus. Directed by Timoteus Anggawan Kusno
Amid the mass hysteria over the killings of alleged sorcerers following the collapse of Suharto’s authoritarian regime in 1999, a group of researchers discovers a sack of mysterious documents. As they sift through its contents – unsettling reports, enigmatic photographs and fragmented recordings – they gradually piece together a hidden story: a secretive military project in which rural children were taken and subjected to covert experiments and indoctrination. In this fiction film, steeped in magical realism and mysticism, formats like Super 8mm, Hi8, Video8, digital 35mm and AI-generated images are employed to reflect on Indonesia’s turbulent past.
Koki, Ciao. Directed by Quenton Miller
Co-written and narrated by Koki, the 67-year-old speaking cockatoo formerly owned by Tito, leader of Yugoslavia for 35 years, this film is a short experimental documentary and autobiography, featuring a non-human as its central creative figure. Koki was part of the diplomacy and entertainment package on the Brijuni islands, site of Tito’s residence and a key location during the Non-Aligned Movement. The Koki show still continues on Brijuni where he is caged on public display for tourists. Featuring recordings made with Koki over four years and previously unseen footage and images from state archives, the film weaves together fragments of Koki’s life on Brijuni during state visits from political figures including Nikita Khrushchev, Sukarno, the Ceaușescus and Indira Gandhi, as well as celebrities such as Sophia Loren and Orson Welles.
These are just a few of the standout films that left a lasting impression on us, but this year’s Berlinale Shorts program is filled with many more compelling voices and visions.
To explore the full selection and discover all the films premiering at the festival, check out the complete Berlinale Shorts 2025 lineup here.