Berlin film festival 2025 roundup – a new boss, a flawless fairytale and Ethan Hawke’s finest hour

At a snowy Berlinale, against a backdrop of political divisions, this year’s standouts include Lucile Hadžihalilović’s The Ice Tower, Richard Linklater’s Broadway biopic of Lorenz Hart, and intensely sexual romance starring Jessica Chastain

Kontinental ’25 review – scattergun satire on a tour of Romania’s social ills

A bailiff has an identity crisis after a tragedy in Radu Jude’s new film, a scornful polemic on 21st-century Europe set between hope and despair

Oslo Stories Trilogy: Dreams review – teen’s high romantic hopes throw adults into disarray

When Johanne, at 17, writes a memoir about her passion for teacher Johanna, the precocious result rattles three generations

‘The most important thing was getting to the truth’: how Claude Lanzmann broke all the rules to create Shoah

French director Guillaume Ribot’s new film shines a light on the making of Lanzmann’s nine-hour Holocaust opus – a tale of obsession, deception and danger

What Marielle Knows review – teenager’s telepathic powers reveal parents’ secrets and lies

In this fantasy-satire of bourgeois family life, a girl is suddenly able to see everything her messed-up parents are up to

Girls on Wire review – Chinese behind-the-scenes stunt drama is a spectacle

A stunt double who plays roof-bouncing ninjas before the lead steps in for the closeup is stuck in a family/mob triangle in Vivian Qu’s occasionally silly thriller

Islands review – sexual tension and dangerously polite encounters

This intriguing noir mystery with a twist in its tale sees a couple befriend a tennis coach at a holiday resort with unnerving results

Dreams review – Jessica Chastain channels rich Americans whose charity comes with strings

The erotic reward for Chastain’s sponsorship of a Mexican dancer lights a fuse that reveals philanthropy’s toxic underside

Mickey 17 review – Robert Pattinson proves expendable in Bong Joon-ho’s eerily cheery cloning drama

The Parasite director delivers an intriguing yet baffling sci-fi epic, featuring panto gnashing bad guys played by Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette

Ari review – a French primary teacher flunks out in daydreaming misfire

The promising French director Leonore Serraille delivers a dud with this undercooked story of a selfish drifter who was once a talented educator and now can’t teach for toffee

Hot Milk review – Fiona Shaw a fierce fly in simmering erotic soup

A cantankerous Shaw undercuts her daughter’s summer sexual awakening in this interestingly elusive adaptation of Deborah Levy’s novel

Peter Hujar’s Day review – Ben Whishaw goes low-key in snapshot of the photographer’s remarkable life

Whishaw is not tested by this verbatim retelling of Hujar’s day in hip 1970s New York, recounting encounters with Ginsburg, Burroughs and Leibowitz

Tilda Swinton decries ‘internationally enabled mass murder’ at Berlin film festival

Actor speaks out against ‘the unacceptable complacency of our greed-addicted governments’ as she picks up a Golden Bear award for lifetime achievement

Film in Europe is booming, but the gongs and glamour only tell one side of the story

The Berlinale opens today to an industry thriving on EU funds. But where is the money going – and are audiences benefiting too? asks film critic Moritz Pfeifer

The trans film-maker who remade Batman: ‘There’s a reason all the heroes are queer, mentally ill villains’

Vera Drew’s award-winning new film imagines Batman as a boy-grooming baddie and the Joker as a transgender clown – a hectic riposte to the idea that woke killed the joke