Rithy Panh looks at Cambodia’s lucrative trade in CO2 certificates and losing the forest in docu Nous sommes les fruits de la forêt, Joko Anwar offers a supernatural horror-comedy set in a prison with a catchy play on titles in Ghost in the Cell, and James Benning looks at a handful of structures in EIGHT BRIDGES — they are among the thirty-two feature film offerings in the Forum programme. Nine feature debuts, hybrids, fiction and items such as Nicolás Pereda‘s Everything Else Is Noise who re-teams with Teresita Sánchez in an absurdist comedy and Golden Leopard winning Ralitza Petrova finally drops her sophomore feature Lust. Here are the 32 selections:
AnyMart
by Yusuke Iwasaki | with Shota Sometani, Erika Karata, Masahiko Nishimura
Japan 2026
Forum | World premiere | Debut film
A supermarket as both a microcosm of Japanese society and the setting for a socially critical horror film. Expressionless faces and a supervisor who demands zombie-like friendliness. Only the young Sakai doesn’t stop hoping. What a debut!
Auslandsreise (Foreign Travel)
by Ted Fendt | with Leonie Rodrian, Florian Model, Alejo Franzetti, Hanna Döring, Sigrid Vagt
Germany 2026
Forum | World premiere
A year in Berlin: Leonie wanders through the city and the texts of Anna Maria Ortese. Speaking with friends and translator Sigrid Vagt, she is also looking for the narrative threads of her own life. A film of reading shot in glowing, matter-of-fact 16mm.
Black Lions – Roman Wolves
by Haile Gerima
Ethiopia / USA 2026
Forum | World premiere | Documentary form
Decades in the making, Haile Gerima’s sweeping survey of Italy’s brutal colonial legacy in Ethiopia is a monumental reckoning with suppressed history. With a balladeer’s spirit, Gerima forges an epic ballad of resistance, freedom and national pride.
Cesarean Weekend
by Mohammad Schirvani | with Nader Mashayekhi, Peyman Yeganeh, Milad Ahmadzadeh, Armin Shirvani, Bita Jamshidi
Iran 2026
Forum | World premiere
In a villa in the north of Iran, the dividing lines between different generations of a family and those separating celebration from discord are sounded out, as is the meaning of love. An intense, wild, and philosophical depiction of contemporary Iran.
Chronos – Fluss der Zeit (Chronos – Flow of Time)
by Volker Koepp | with Tanja Kloubert, Anetta Kahane, Volha Hapeyeva, Ana Scutelnicu
Germany 2026
Forum | World premiere | Documentary form
Tracing biographical lines, Volker Koepp steps into his oeuvre, rich in encounters. Returning to Lithuania, Moldova and Czernowitz, he looks back and brings things up to date, as the war against Ukraine becomes a determining element of the present. Epic.
Crocodile
by The Critics, Pietra Brettkelly | with Raymond J. Yusuff, Godwin Josiah, Ronald Yusuff, Victor Josiah, Richard Yusuff
New Zealand / Nigeria 2026
Forum | World premiere | Documentary form
In Nigeria, the young art-collective The Critics, armed with makeshift gear, conjures homemade sci-fi spectacles, chronicling their reality while blasting into wild imagined worlds. A vibrant documentary and a gleeful ode to the power of (self)invention.
De capul nostru (On Our Own)
by Tudor Cristian Jurgiu | with Denisa Vraja, Vlad Furtună
Romania / Italy 2026
Forum | World premiere
Flavia’s mother a care taker in Italy, her father on a building site. Luca and Tina supposed to be looked after by their fragile grandmother. A wonderful coming-of-age film about growing up among those of the same age when the adults have left the stage.
Doggerland
by Kim Ekberg | with Anita Holm, John Holm, Astrid Drettner, Roger Carlsson, Lotta Bäck-Vogel
Sweden 2026
Forum | World premiere
Instead of finding a “proper” job, Alf, pushing 40, lives with his mum and drifts though Norrköping’s cultural scene. Chats & faces, routines & intuitions, local politics & everyday life – the intimate and the social, in black-and-white analogue images.
Effondrement (Collapse)
by Anat Even
France 2026
Forum | World premiere | Documentary form
In mourning, Anat Even began travelling with a camera along the Gaza Strip after October 7 – again and again. Striving to show the reality of this painful border. Trying not to look away. An essay about questions of causality and responsibility.
EIGHT BRIDGES
by James Benning
USA 2026
Forum | World premiere
“It seems to be the time to consider bridges.” – James Benning
Einar Schleef – Ich habe kein Deutschland gefunden (Einar Schleef – No Germany Did I Find)
by Sandra Prechtel | with Einar Schleef
Germany 2026
Forum | World premiere | Documentary form
With his monumental productions, Einar Schleef pushed theatre to the outer reaches, confounded expectations in East and West alike, grappled with GDR origins and the BRD present. A universal artist emerges from the archive: “I’m not human, I’m dynamite”.
Everything Else Is Noise
by Nicolás Pereda | with Teresita Sánchez, Rosa Estela Juárez Vargas, Luisa Pardo, Lázaro G. Rodríguez, Francisco Barreiro
Mexico / Germany / Canada 2026
Forum | World premiere
In Mexico, Tere, a musician-composer, opens her home to a TV interview with a friend, as topics meander and new voices drift in. An absurdist comical chamber piece, it skewers art-world hypocrisy, mocks pretension, and celebrates a singular womanly bond.
Flying Tigers
by Madhusree Dutta | with Madhusree Dutta, Mi You, Purav Goswami
Germany / India 2026
Forum | World premiere | Documentary form
An Alzheimer-plagued mother’s fear of tigers in Assam sparks a multi-location probe into the US army unit supplying Kunming in WWII. A collective quest through history’s butterfly effects, told via found stories and turned hybrid.
Forest up in the Mountain
by Sofia Bordenave | with Mirta Ñancuano, Lorena Cañuqueo, Joaquin Rapoport
Argentina 2026
Forum | World premiere | Documentary form
In 2017, young Mapuche Rafael Nahuel was killed by police in the Patagonian forest. Site visits, court proceedings – the film unites the elements involved in solving the crime. Meticulously observed: the struggle for civil rights and narrating history.
Ghost in the Cell
by Joko Anwar | with Abimana Aryasatya, Endy Arfian, Bront Palarae, Morgan Oey, Lukman Sardi
Indonesia 2026
Forum | World premiere
Joko Anwar’s supernatural horror-comedy set in a prison: inmates must unite against a murderous ghost who turns corpses into art installations. Staying calm is near-impossible – and riotously funny, laced with sharp jabs at power, corruption, and violence.
Hear the Yellow
by Banu Sıvacı | with Selva Erdener, Suleyman Kadim Kabaali, Asena Hotamış, Kerem Ozdogan, Okan Selvi
Turkey 2026
Forum | World premiere
Due to family matters Suna returns to the Turkish village she’s from. Riven with cracks caused by drought, her parental home is as fragile as the relationships between the local people. Undeterred, Suna shines a light into the past’s dark corners.
I Built a Rocket Imagining Your Arrival
by Janaína Marques | with Verônica Cavalcanti, Luciana Souza, Fabíola Líper, Christiane de Lavor, Ridson Reis
Brazil 2026
Forum | World premiere | Debut film
Fifty-something Rosa, lying in an MRI scanner, is prompted to summon a happy memory. She plunges into a meandering, subconscious road trip with her indomitable mother, both queer, where wild imagination becomes a tender, unruly form of therapy.
If Pigeons Turned to Gold
by Pepa Lubojacki | with David Richter, Pepa Lubojacki, David Lubojacki, Marco Arnone
Czechia / Slovakia 2026
Forum | World premiere | Debut film | Documentary form
Alcohol addiction is a constant in Pepa Lubojacki’s family. In an attempt to find a sisterly-brotherly way of dealing with it, text, long-term observation, beats and AI-animated photos are combined into an unflinching, yet loving form of disclosure.
Joy Boy: A Tribute to Julius Eastman
by Mawena Yehouessi, Fallon Mayanja, Rob Jacobs, Victoire Karera Kampire, Paul Shemisi, Anne Reijniers
Belgium 2026
Forum | World premiere
African American composer Julius Eastman’s music and voice take turns. Sparked by colonial and life history. Raw, radical, crystal clear. A multipart, flashy, transnational-collective performance by six artists. An homage.
Liebhaberinnen (Women as Lovers)
by Koxi | with Johanna Wokalek, Hannah Schiller, Ben Münchow, Victoria Trauttmansdorff, Jasmin Artosha Mokhtare
Germany / Luxembourg 2026
Forum | World premiere | Debut film
An invisible bond links a young cam girl and a trade fair hostess, making the impossibility of female satisfaction all too apparent. Constant disquiet pervades this Elfriede Jelinek adaptation, fuelled by the dismal promises of late capitalism.
Lust
by Ralitza Petrova | with Snejanka Mihaylova, Nikola Mutafov, Mihail Milchev, Alexis Atmadjov
Bulgaria / Denmark / Sweden 2026
Forum | World premiere
With formal rigour and subtly playing with genre, body and soul, this story of knots and liberation follows Lilian, who is as inscrutable as her desires, constrained by a pact of celibacy. When her father dies, she returns to the place of her past.
Masayume
by Nao Yoshigai | with Nao Yoshigai
Japan 2026
Forum | World premiere | Debut film | Documentary form
After her mother’s death, Nao retreats to a Zen temple to wrestle with grief. Blending family archives, hand-drawn animation and performance art, this seductively meditative documentary explores suffering, and the gentle art of transcending it.
Members of the Problematic Family
by R Gowtham | with Karuththadayan, Ara.Ajith Kumar, Kanchana Senthil, TPS, Saravana Siddharth
India 2026
Forum | World premiere | Debut film
A man dies young. Funeral rites – yes; mourning – not so much. A death that stirs and shakes things up. A film that shows the violence of family relationships with uncanny subtlety and verve, the pendulum of void and solace. What a debut feature!
My Name
by Chung Ji-young | with Yeom Hye-ran, Shin Woo-bin, Choi Jun-woo, Park Ji-bin
South Korea 2026
Forum | World premiere
Young-oak is a boy with a girl’s name at a boys’ school rich in testosterone. His mother isn’t concerned. Veteran director Chung Ji-young allows the violence of South Korea’s early years to slam into this complex identity drama with the force of a comet.
Nous sommes les fruits de la forêt (We Are the Fruits of the Forest)
by Rithy Panh | with Pa Kreb, Mak Kreb, Yeay Kreb, Mak Lisa, Pouk Choeut
Cambodia / France 2025
Forum | European premiere | Documentary form
The Indigenous Bunong perform agriculture by hand and end up in conflict with Cambodia’s lucrative trade in CO2 certificates, losing the forest whose ownership they have no conception of. Now & then, split screen. A visual firework display.
Panda
by Xinyang Zhang | with Xianmin Zhang, Elvis Yang, Han Chen, Jiahe Lyu, Ruyin Zhang
Singapore / Hong Kong, China 2026
Forum | World premiere | Debut film
Four wraithlike figures of different ages and pasts, haunted by memory, drift along Nanjing’s wintry riverbanks. They share an abandoned ruin, where talk turns to poetry, painterly pauses, instrumental reveries and the unabashed group therapy of karaoke.
Piedras preciosas (Gemstones)
by Simón Vélez | with Juan Lugo, Laura Taurines, Sofía Jaramillo, Yira Plaza, Daniel Cortés
Colombia / Portugal 2026
Forum | World premiere | Debut film
Machado is harvesting grapes in France when he is asked to carry out a tricky mission: to steal an emerald back home in Colombia. A tale full of swindles that swings elegantly between bourgeois greed and the rigours of doing what needs to be done.
Prénoms (Given Names)
by Nurith Aviv
France 2026
Forum | World premiere | Documentary form
Flowers as a gift for guests, the Latin alphabet as a form of order. A film of rules which varies, multiplies and expands into a novel of nomadic world knowledge as it narrates. Nurith Aviv visits her friends and asks for their first names – c’est ça!
Szenario (Scenario)
by Marie Wilke
Germany 2026
Forum | World premiere | Documentary form
In Europe’s biggest military model city, war isn’t just rehearsed, but also conveyed directly. Marie Wilke’s sober, focused observation shows the Bundeswehr navigating how to deal with the past, adapt to the future and its own self-representation.
The Day of Wrath: Tales from Tripoli
by Rania Rafei
Lebanon / Saudi Arabia / Qatar 2026
Forum | World premiere | Documentary form
The story of a city and its uprisings. From the 1940s into the present, Rania Rafei follows Tripoli, Lebanon’s second-biggest city, over the years, moving through different generations and factions. An act of political tenderness.
The Moths & the Flame
by Kevin Contento | with Jean Voltaire, Malik Hall, Wiltavious McKelton, Tavion Jamal Dent, Helen Contento
USA 2026
Forum | World premiere | Documentary form
In Pahokee, Florida, the myth of the absent Black father is contradicted every day: housework, children’s birthdays, neighbourhood, care. In vignettes brimming with solidarity, Contento traces out his protagonists’ self-confidence. Calm and attentive.
Was an Empfindsamkeit bleibt (Sometimes, I Imagine Them All at a Party)
by Daniela Magnani Hüller
Germany 2026
Forum | World premiere | Debut film | Documentary form
Soberly and with restraint, the director reconstructs the attempted femicide she survived fourteen years before. Intense conversations with people from her past provide an external perspective on an act subjectively and objectively impossible to grasp.