The 2025 Berlin Film Festival is starting to take shape ahead of the official announcement of its entire lineup on January 21st, including some exciting additions today.
Bong Joon Ho’s hotly anticipated follow-up (and overly delayed) to his Oscar Best Picture-winning “Parasite,” “Mickey 17“ starring Robert Pattinson, will be featured in the Berlinale Special section. The sci-fi film follows a disposable employee who is sent on a human expedition to colonize the ice world Niflheim. After one iteration dies, a new body is regenerated with most of his memories intact. We previously covered the trailer here.
Joining it is a new Justin Kurzel-directed series titled “The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” starring Euphoria breakout star Jacob Elordi. “The Narrow Road to the Deep North” will make its world premiere at the festival as part of the Berlinale Special Gala section. Adapted from Richard Flanagan’s Booker Prize-winning novel, the series follows Elordi’s character, a celebrated World War II hero tormented by his time in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp and memories of a pre-war love affair.
Also featured in the Berlinale Special lineup is Dylan Southern’s “The Thing with Feathers,” starring Academy Award-nominee Benedict Cumberbatch and Richard Boxall. This film is set to have its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and then will make its way across the ocean to Berlinale for its European premiere. It tells the story of a young father unraveling as a sinister presence begins to stalk him after the death of his wife.
It was also announced that Berlinale will host a special screening of Claude Lanzmann’s monumental and much-celebrated 1985 Holocaust documentary “Shoah.” The film, created over 12 years ago through interviews with Holocaust survivors, bystanders, and perpetrators, recounts the extermination of six million Jews during World War II and has widely been cited as one of cinema’s greatest achievements.
Meanwhile, the Panorama section will open with “Welcome Home Baby” by Andreas Prochaska. The program will showcase 34 films from 28 countries, featuring new films by Sir Isaac Julien, Ina Weisse, Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay, Amalia Ulman, Jeanette Nordahl, Sébastien Betbeder, and Fernando Eimbcke. For the first time, a series—”Other People’s Money”—will also be included in the Panorama lineup.
More announcements are expected soon from Berlinale, with the full lineup coming on January 21st. What do you think of this news? How do you feel about the programming decisions since Jacqueline Lyanga and Michael Stütz took over as Film Programming Co-Directors last year? Are you excited for this year’s Berlinale? Will you be attending? Please let us know your thoughts in the the comments section below or on our X account.