76ª Berlinale Competition

Wim Wenders will be joined on the jury by Nepali producer and director Min Bahadur Bham (Shambala, 2024); South Korean actress Bae Doona, a frequent collaborator of Bong Joon-ho, Park Chan-wook, and Hirokazu Kore-eda; Indian director Shivendra Singh Dungarpur; American director and producer Reinaldo Marcus Green (Monsters and Men, King Richard, and Bob Marley: One Love); director, writer, and producer HIKARI, winner of the Audience Award in 2019 with 37 Seconds (Berlinale Panorama); and Polish producer Ewa Puszczyńska (Ida, Cold War, The Zone of Interest).

The 22 films competing in 2026 for the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival include a debut feature, a documentary, and an animated film. Notably, six directors have previously competed for the award, while gender parity remains absent, as only nine of the selected titles are directed or co-directed by women (Eva Trobisch, Angela Schanelec, Leyla Bouzid, Anke Blondé, Tizza Covi, Geneviève Dulude-de Celles, Anna Fitch, Hanna Bergholm, and Beth de Araújo).

Among the selection is a remarkable animated debut, A New Dawn, by Japanese director Yoshitoshi Shinomiya, as well as the second feature by Finnish director Hanna Bergholm, Nightborn, following her body horror debut Hatching (2022), which won the Special Jury Prize at Sundance.

As is often the case, the German contingent at the festival is significant. This year it includes Eva Trobisch’s Home Stories, centered on a television talent show, along with two films by directors previously awarded at the festival: the drama My Wife Cries by Angela Schanelec, who won the Silver Bear for Best Director in 2019 with I Was at Home, But…; and İlker Çatak, whose The Teachers’ Lounge received the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay in 2023, and who premieres Yellow Letters this year, a film about the political and artistic commitment of a Turkish couple. Also Turkish is director Emin Alper (Burning Days, 2022), who returns with Salvation, a drama about regional terrorism and tribal clashes.

At the Sea (Kornél Mundruczó, 2025).

France, however, is not far behind, with three films in competition, two of them backed by the previous accolades of their directors. Alain Gomis—who won the Silver Bear – Grand Jury Prize with Félicité—will premiere Dao, a film that forges a cultural link between France and Guinea-Bissau through the framework of a wedding ceremony. Meanwhile, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun (Jury Prize at Cannes for A Screaming Man) returns with Soumsoum, la nuit des astres, in which a 17-year-old girl discovers her supernatural powers. In a Whisper, by Tunisian director Leyla Bouzid, also centers on a young woman in the midst of mourning and returning to her family environment.

Elle Fanning and Pamela Anderson star in the new film by Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz (winner of the Un Certain Regard Prize for The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão), Rosebush Pruning, about a family struggling with genetic illnesses who live on a rural estate. German actress Sandra Hüller leads the cast of Rose, directed by Austrian filmmaker Markus Schleinzer, in which a woman in the early seventeenth century disguises herself as a man and strives at all costs to become a respectable citizen.

Belgium-based director Anke Blondé will premiere Dust, a story set in the world of finance that traces the final weekend before the collapse of two well-known Flemish businessmen in the late 1990s became public. Music is also present in two films in this section: The Loneliest Man in Town by Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel—who won Best Director and Best Actress in the Orizzonti section in 2022 with Vera—is an intimate biopic of blues musician Al Cook, who plays himself; meanwhile, Everybody Digs Bill Evans by Grant Gee portrays an episode in the life of the legendary jazz pianist Bill Evans, following the death of his brilliant bassist, his ensuing depression, and his return to music, with performances by Anders Danielsen Lie and Bill Pullman.

Kornél Mundruczó (Pieces of a Woman, 2020) presents At the Sea, starring Amy Adams as a woman who, after rehabilitation, returns to her family’s beach house and readjusts to her former life without the profession that once defined her identity. Geneviève Dulude-de Celles (A Colony, 2018) returns to Berlin with Fleur bleue, in which Mihail, a Canadian immigrant, goes back to his country of origin thirty years later to confront a past he wished to forget. Lance Hammer (Ballast, 2008) presents Queen at Sea, a drama about the mental deterioration of a woman with dementia and the limits of protection and autonomy, starring Juliette Binoche and Tom Courtenay.

A New Dawn (Yoshitoshi Shinomiya, 2025).

Films

• Rosebush Pruning (Karim Aïnouz)
• Salvation (Emin Alper)
• Nightborn (Hanna Bergholm)
• Dust (Anke Blondé)
• In a Whisper (Leyla Bouzid)
• Yellow Letters (İlker Çatak)
• We Are All Strangers (Anthony Chen)
• The Loneliest Man in Town (Tizza Covi, Rainer Frimmel)
• Josephine (Beth de Araújo)
• Fleur bleue (Nina Roza) (Genevieve Dulude-de Celles)
• Flies (Fernando Eimbcke)
• YO Love Is a Rebellious Bird (Anna Fitch, Banker White)
• Everybody Digs Bill Evans (Grant Gee)
• Dao (Alain Gomis)
• Queen at Sea (Lance Hammer)
• Soumsoum, The Night of the Stars (Mahamat-Saleh Harou)
• At the Sea  (Kornél Mundruczó)
• My Wife Cries (Angela Schanelec)
• Rose (Markus Schleinzer,)
• A New Dawn (Yoshitoshi Shinomiya)
• Wolfram (Warwick Thornton)
• Home Stories (Eva Trobisch)