Playlist
When the world is engulfed by the COVID-19 pandemic, three scientists who long predicted its arrival must battle not only the virus but also a wave of misinformation, conspiracy theories, and political blame that threatens to eclipse the truth. This is their story. Part investigation, part thriller, Blame investigates the relationship between science, politics and the media.
Open a bottle of climate anxiety. Pour the contents into a hot pot under high pressure. Then add a teaspoon of horror, a tablespoon of anger and three drops of deep disappointment in humanity. Let it all come to a boil while you invite a group of scientific researchers who don't know each other, but know all about the fact that the end of the world is near. Let the scientists spice up the dish with their most suppressed feelings about climate change and the future of the planet. And last but not least, bring in a professional group therapist who isn't afraid of an awkward silence to get them to sit in a circle and share their feelings with each other.
Dreams as motors of human revolution: this is the theory of Sidarta Ribeiro, a Brazilian neuroscientist who has spent 20 years studying the mysteries of dreaming.
A Sri Lankan artist and the chief of the indigenous Wanniyala-Aetto demand the return of ancestral remains and artifacts from Swiss museums - confronting the country with its hidden colonial past.
Tilda Swinton plays the extra-terrestrial android "Friendship" who discusses life's big questions with a British war correspondent in a hotel in Amman during the civil war in Jordan in 1970. The Berlinale is presenting a 4K restoration of this 1987 film.
At Milan's Niguarda public hospital, the unconventional Dr. Bini leads a bold mission overseeing aspiring parents undergoing in vitro fertilization and the journeys of individuals reconciling their bodies with their gender identities. He navigates the constraints set by a conservative government and an aggressive market eager to commodify bodies.
Follows a mysterious herd of ghost elephants in the jungles of Angola.
Girls are made to make love follows a sociologist's investigation into sexuality in couples. She meets heterosexual women aged between 25 and 45. The interviews deal with experiences, desire and love, as well as norms in male/female relationships but also paths to emancipation.
Dr. Johann Spittler is a neuropsychiatrist in Germany who assists individuals seeking euthanasia. The film delves into the ethical complexity and emotional weight of his work, portraying the profound moral dilemmas and intimate human stories threaded through assisted suicide.
Drawing from an extensive archive of over 3,000 narrative works HOLOFICTION critically examines how Holocaust imagery has been codified and reproduced in cinema across decades. The film exposes recurring visual motifs and narrative patterns that have become iconic in the portrayal of the Holocaust. Inspired by Claude Lanzmann's skepticism toward visual representations of historical trauma, the film questions the possibility and implications of depicting such an atrocity in fictional cinema. Through its essayistic approach, HOLOFICTION invites audiences to reflect on the ethics and responsibility of cinematic storytelling, urging a deeper understanding of how these representations shape collective memory and historical perception.
While humans try to prevent matter from decaying, microfungi remind us that everything must perish in order to continue to exist. This conceptually designed film tells a story of transformation with religion as its backdrop and fungi as its metaphor.
How Deep is Your Love, follows intrepid biologists exploring the mysterious deep sea, where 70% of our planet lies hidden. As they uncover mesmerizing creatures and ecosystems thriving in darkness, a looming threat emerges: the prospect of deep-sea mining in this untouched wilderness. This film weaves wonder with urgency, challenging us to balance the drive for resources with the intrinsic value of an ecosystem. As we journey through this breathtaking realm, we are left to ponder how deep is our love.
In the post–Roe v. Wade United States, scientists are on the cusp of a watershed moment in birth control—the introduction of new, viable male contraceptives. As we watch brave individuals fight to make medical history, Big Pharma's reluctance to invest in these new products remains a maddening obstacle to the groundbreaking prospect of changing family planning and gender politics forever.
With a stunning array of archival images and sounds, renowned filmmakers Courtney Stephens and Michael Almereyda explore the life and ideas of intrepid mid-century utopian neuroscientist, John C. Lilly, whose unorthodox experimentations into human and animal consciousness were controversial in methodology but far-reaching in intent.
Just Our Heart is not only a comforting shoulder—it's a ritual blade. This feature documentary by Maartje Nevejan dives into the deep waters of grief—not only personal, but ecological, colonial, and spiritual. Sparked by the loss of her partner and the grief of her children in the face of ecological collapse, Nevejan resists centering her own story. Instead, she opens a space for something larger: a cinematic ritual that gathers three remarkable women—grief doulas, ritualists, spiritual disruptors—who guide others not toward closure, but transformation. In collaboration with visionary ecologist Dr. Monica Gagliano and Zen priest and grief pioneer Roshi Joan Halifax, Just Our Heart expands the mourning room. It invites voices that are usually silenced: the dead, the exploited, the Earth herself. This is a film that doesn't offer answers—it invites participation in something older than language: ritual as a way of relating to loss, and as a method of resistance. Just Our Heart refuses the neat aesthetics of healing as an endpoint. It challenges us to ask: What if our hearts are not broken, but breaking open? And what happens when, in that rupture, we do not turn away—but stay? The film zooms out as we witness the grief from children to adults, to mother earth herself. In these troubling times, without mentioning the specifics, "Just Our Heart" is call to stay with the wound, crack open a little more, and open our hearts to all of it.
A space princess is thrust out of her sheltered life and onto a galactic quest to save her bounty hunter ex-girlfriend from the Straight White Maliens.
Little, Big, and Far is a hybrid feature film with a focus on astronomy, physics, and natural history museums. The main character, Karl, is an Austrian astronomer and dark sky advocate, at a crossroads in life and work. At 70, with jobs at risk and his physicist wife distancing, he and his colleague, Sarah, also struggle with the environmental crises reshaping their fields. After a museums conference in Greece, Karl decides not to return home and heads for a small island in hopes of finding a dark enough sky to reconnect with the stars. Left on his own at a remote mountain trail, he ascends and waits for darkness to fall.
In the 1990s, Chinese-Canadian artist Lloyd Wong began a video work about his living with HIV. It remained unfinished. Thirty years after his death, filmmaker Lesley Loksi Chan discovers and edits the material.
LOST FOR WORDS is inspired by Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane's The Lost Words book, created in response to 50 nature words being taken out of the Oxford Youth Dictionary in 2007, such as raven, magpie, otter, adder, acorn... This best seller has had a vast and unexpected impact and was distributed to schools across the UK, adapted for the theatre and even recomposed into music. It is a growing phenomenon that continues to expand worldwide by raising one main question that we, too, reflect on in our documentary: How can we preserve what we can no longer name? This choral documentary gives a voice to children, scientists, artists, the elderly... leading us through the seasons and also letting nature speak for itself as we are brought to question our anthropocentric perspective.
Let's talk about sex. In this radically engaged and engaging documentary, Pier Paolo Pasolini takes to the streets, town squares, beaches, factories, and universities of 1960s Italy to solicit everyday citizens' thoughts on a host of hot-button subjects, including sex work, gender equality, homosexuality, and divorce (then illegal in Italy). What emerges is both a kaleidoscopic cross section of faces and places—from the industrialized cities of the North to the rural villages of the South—and an incisive portrait of a society where, despite the rapid modernization brought on by the postwar "economic miracle," hypocrisy, repression, and conformism still hold sway.
A poetic exploration of three subterranean telescopes in remote regions of Canada, Japan, and Antarctica that reveal a new way of perceiving the universe from within. Underground, we are dreaming into the earth.
'Messengers' was shot in cooperation with the groundbreaking particle physics collaborations SNO+ (Canada), Super Kamiokande (Japan), and IceCube (Antarctica). As each surreal subterranean facility is explored in order of physical size, the film gradually reveals how these environments not only intersect with the natural world, but can also be seen as extensions of the unconscious mind – monuments to our questions about the universe. Following the journey of neutrinos from a black hole, 'Messengers' serves as a tactile meditation on human scientific endeavour, the vastness of geologic time, and the shadowy depths of the unconscious.
Fragmented images of love, activism, and ancestral resilience intertwine with poignant voice messages between the filmmaker and his lover in Brazil, forming a lyrical reflection on memory and survival.
In a world where technology and humanity intertwine, Tiffany, a feminist and self-aware sex robot, embarks on a unique journey of self-discovery. Speaking to experts, Tiffany confronts the social norms, body image stereotypes, and patriarchal influences that shaped her design, while also questioning the place of the queer community in the context of sex technology. As debates about her social impact intensify, Tiffany navigates the complexities of interdisciplinary communication, the rise of AI companions, and the vast field of sex technology innovations. But it is the potential for a radical shift beyond human-like designs and the openness to individualized, queer, and feminist DIY solutions that truly challenges the status quo. With each revelation, Tiffany's contemplative journey challenges our perceptions and prompts us to question the boundaries between technology, desire, queerness, and societal expectations.
One in ten people hear voices. In this film, we meet five people living with this phenomenon. One person hears a single voice, another hears 19. One voice wants to protect, another wants to kill.
The film takes place in a therapeutic setting, with a psychiatrist off-screen leading a conversation with patients about their voices—and with the voices, too. Who are they? Why are they here? And what do they actually want? We witness how this revolutionary approach allows the patients to gain a greater insight into their own minds, and acceptance of what goes on inside them.
Which is not to say that the voices readily give themselves away—something is at stake here. Several sessions reveal a trauma that is directly linked to the emergence of these voices. Unraveling these histories, however, is not the focus of My Word Against Mine. Above all, the film draws a fascinating group portrait—of the protagonists as well as their voices—reflecting the wondrous world of the human mind.
The film tells the story of Curt Unckel, a social scientist who lived with indigenous peoples for 40 years. Curt was baptized in 1906 by the Guarani as Nimuendajú and dedicated his life to studying and understanding different cultures. He witnessed the persecution and expulsion of indigenous peoples from their lands.
1859: Charles Darwin's theory of evolution angers the God-fearing Victorians. Their great-great-great-grandparents were supposed to have been monkeys? Well, thank you very much! In order to prove the accuracy of his theories without causing further uproar, Darwin decides to turn his attention to completely different creatures: orchids. But even his sharp mind cannot fathom these flowers, which keep their secrets to themselves. 140 years after Darwin's death, biologist and orchid lover Thomas Cassar embarks on a journey across continents to uncover these secrets.
What if the words we use every day shape not only our worldview but also our relationships – without us even realising it? In this contemplative short documentary, classicist Tazuko van Berkel delves into ancient Greek texts under the cover of night, following clues like a detective in search of hidden meanings. She uncovers one of her favourite Greek words, ξένος (xenos), which strikingly means both 'foreigner' and 'host'. What can this radically different understanding from the past reveal about how we see 'the other' today?
Through her exploration of the ancient Greek roots of words such as economy, friendship, and trust, Van Berkel invites viewers to question their habitual ways of thinking – and perhaps even to let them go. Insightful, philosophical, and quietly poetic, this short documentary demonstrates how the study of the classics can resonate profoundly in the modern world.
Leaving their human hosts, mental disorders take on anthropomorphic forms and find new refuges.
Boca Chica, Texas. Hemmed in by the Gulf of Mexico and the Rio Grande, the village is defined by the rhythmic sound of the waves. But this wild country is in the midst of irreversible change. For the swamps have been drained, the beaches closed and the homes bought out: the shadow looming over the beach is that of a 50-story rocket, being readied for launch into space.
Tales told from the perspective of a lonely old tree standing in the middle of a botanical garden.
Spreadsheet Champions follows six students as they put their Excel-lent skills to the ultimate test in Microsoft's most prestigious and difficult category. A heartwarming tale of formulas and friendship, Spreadsheet Champions reveals the far-reaching influence of spreadsheets in today's world and the power of young minds to shape our future. Who will triumph, who will fail, who will EXCEL?
STARS tells of the Nommo: extra-terrestrial Afro-hermaphrodite anthro-amphibian migrants. Delivered from outer space via the Dogon of Mali, STARS is a queer African tale of tails, told through animation, music, and poetry.
How's the Big Everything? Garba asks Nicole. For them, it encompasses family, politics, History, daily life, the stars, small things, and time passing like the wind. By delving into their memories, at the time of Niger's independence, we come face to face with the complexity of the present.
In a country where eligible men greatly outnumber women, three serial bachelors join an intensive seven-day dating camp led by one of China's most sought-after dating coaches, in what may be their last-ditch effort to find love.
Mythical like a dragon, but also real, we grew attached to ideas of what a dinosaur could have been. A gentle touch in a clay layer uncovers fossilised bones, the physical remains of what is left of the creatures that spark our imaginations are met with tenderness. 'You don't love me, you love the idea of me', says the t-rex. A team of VUB researchers set out to find definite proof of what caused the end of the dinosaur era. One fine line in the rockbed holds knowledge to the minute, of that fateful day, 66 million years ago. This is not an impossible love story, it's a true crime, set in deep time.
Two young men during World War I set out to record the lives, voices and music of their American countrymen.
The film takes place in the desolate Kazakh steppe, on the grounds of a former nuclear testing site, where two ecologists conduct research to identify radioactive areas unfit for habitation. Nearby, an eyewitness to the nuclear tests writes down his personal memories, while his son struggles to save his sick daughter. Through the intimate story of three generations of one family, the film reflects on humanity's collective history and the dire situation facing our future. The steppe serves as a metaphor for our planet, now perilously close to becoming a vast nuclear wasteland.
What if we could transfer the heart of the human brain to artificial intelligence? Empathy, imagination, feelings… and the ability to cooperate? Wider Than the Sky brings us closer to the world-renowned artists, dancers and scientists exploring the different paths that artificial intelligence is taking. Is a collective use of AI to shape a positive future for humanity even possible?
An homage to the work of psychologist Wilhelm Reich, matched with a story about a Yugoslavian girl's affair with a Russian skater.
Two astronauts struggle to resist the intoxicating temptations of an alien spaceship.
In Sweden, a group of professors attends a lecture by a French philosopher presenting his all-encompassing "revolutionary" theory. During the intermission, their admiration quickly spirals into a comically absurd intellectual contest. This witty film satirizes academic narcissism and the dangers of blind reverence for authority.
This film was originally commissioned by The Museum of Sex for the CAM LIFE exhibition. 'A Cyborg Manifesto' is a visual essay and a personal exploration of a life spent online. "We broadcast our image in cells and pixels across continents, viewed by lenses, pushed through codecs and compression algorithms, adapting new ways to circumvent the physical. Thousands of people every day fuck and fuck themselves broadcast live via webcam."
The relationship between humans and nature is in crisis. You could even call it a relationship crisis. So what is more logical than relationship therapy? In Nathalie Faber's new film, the conflict is presented to the Flemish psychiatrist and relationship therapist Dirk de Wachter.
Set between 1953 and 1956, this black-and-white historical feature follows philosopher and psychiatrist Frantz Fanon – author of Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961) – during his tenure as Head of the Fifth Ward at Blida-Joinville Psychiatric Hospital in colonial Algeria. Immersed in the emerging Algerian liberation movement, Fanon rejects colonial psychiatric doctrine, introducing a radical practice grounded in dignity, humanity, and emancipation. The film traces the intimate links between mental illness and colonial oppression, psychological trauma and imperial violence, revealing how Fanon's ideas were not only theorized but lived – pulsing through every act of care.
Taking as its point of departure the global protest movement against animal testing that emerged in the early 2000s, the film examines the current state of the debate. Has meaningful progress been made? A wide range of pioneering scientists appear on screen, working to transform biomedical research through the development of animal-free testing innovations, including multi-organ chips, artificial intelligence, 3D bioprinting and computer-based models. Demonstrating that viable alternatives already exist, the film reveals how systemic change remains frustratingly out of reach. It offers a grounded exploration of how scientific knowledge is produced, asking whether science is on the brink of a new paradigm – or being held back by economic interests and institutional prestige. Capturing a field in transition, the film features contributions from Dutch professor Dr J. (Merel) Ritskes-Hoitinga of Utrecht University.
July 11, 1897. Three men depart from Svalbard in a hydrogen balloon, bound for the North Pole. They are never seen again. Thirty-three years later, on August 6, 1930, a sealing ship makes a chilling discovery on the remote island of Kvitøya: the expedition's remains, bodies frozen in time beneath the snow, alongside journals and undeveloped film. Ninety-three of the 240 recovered photographs are salvaged. What stories do these images and journals reveal?
Queen Charlotte commissions a portrait of her beloved philosopher Leibniz. As the sittings progress, they embark on a passionate quest to uncover the essence of art, love, and truth in painting.
As loneliness and technological progress advance side by side in modern society, Sex Robot Madness roams the Uncanny Valley of ethics and desire, navigating the blurred boundaries between human intimacy and artificial lovers.
Women's health is chronically overlooked – and the consequences can be deadly. Through intimate testimonies, this unflinching film exposes disparities in treatment and outcomes, revealing how male-centred knowledge in healthcare and technology – even AI – has historically neglected and reduced female bodies to data gaps.
The angels have given the Captain of the Sea Butches the holy assignment to travel to a lesbian bar on Venus to get hold of the strongest vibrator in the whole universe – the weapon needed in the fight to destroy the tall tower of the evil gentrifiers. But to get to the vibrator she first has to offer her hands to the two terrifying and tempting Tentacle Femmes, and they just invited her to the darkroom.
How do we deal with things that don't fit our man-made categorizations? Students, archivists and professors at Radboud University study and collect a wide variety of objects. Moving between shelves, hands and minds, the objects' meanings are altered in the process. How do we find an appropriate place for them, and what happens when no such place exists? This film follows three (groups of) objects in their pursuit of a spot within the University archives.
Three cyborg couples enter a newly opened building: the Human Museum. They are confronted with exhibits of humanity: statues of intertwined bodies, anatomical informations, and educational films, reacting emotionally with astonishment, confusion, fear, and curiosity toward the objects in the exhibit. In an inevitable process of machine learning, the six protagonists change during their visit, learning to simulate the rules of arousal and attraction.