A film series by the Goethe-Institut presenting in Limassol and Nicosia German films of the Berlinale 5 February 2025, Rialto Limassol & 13-16 February 2025 Pantheon Nicosia
Berlinale Selection 2025 is the sixth edition of the film series organized by the Goethe-Institut Cyprus, presenting current German cinema in Cyprus. This year’s programme includes a selection of six films that were shown at the Berlinale 2024 and 2023. The films will be shown with English subtitles in February 2025: at and in collaboration with Rialto in Limassol on 5 February 2025, and at Pantheon in Nicosia from 13 to 16 February 2025. The event is supported by the Friends of Cinema Society.
The film selection offers a glimpse into different sections of the Berlinale in 2023 and 2024 (Competition, Encounters, Berlinale Special, Perspektive Deutsches Kino, Generation 14plus, Forum), in an effort to address a variety of current and important subjects. This years’ programme includes a comedy and literary adaption, drama and documentaries. Each film takes us on a journey through different eras, cultures, cities, countries or even continents, sharing different perspectives, stories and experiences.
When Will It Be Again Like It Never Was Before is a deeply moving and simultaneously incredibly funny film about growing up under rather unusual circumstances. Josse spends his childhood and adolescence on the grounds of the psychiatric hospital of which his father is the director, where their family home is also located, considering his father’s patients as family. This coming-of-age film is a celebration of life in all its absurdity and fleetingness. It is based on the autobiographical best-seller written by award winning Joachim Meyerhoff, German actor, director and author.
Katharina Pethke’s debut feature length documentary
Reproduction is a personal work, as it looks at three generations of women in her family. Katharina Pethke, herself an artist, becomes professor at Hamburg’s University of Fine Arts, where both her mother and grandmother studied. Have their ambitions as artists been suffocated by motherhood? Can art and motherhood coexist? This film poses questions about feminism, career and motherhood.
Elaha, a young German-Kurdish woman, is only weeks away from marrying a deeply conservative Kurdish man and she is trying to balance cultural identity and female sexuality. She finds herself at the crossroads between her unconditional love for her family and her desire for an independent life. Both Bayan Layla, who plays Elaha, and Milena Aboyan, who directed the film, have won awards for Elaha.
From Hilde with Love is the latest film by awarded director Andreas Dresen and his fifth Berlinale Competition entry. This moving drama is based on the lives of real members of the anti-Nazi group Red Orchestra, Hilde and Hans Coppi. While the film is set almost 80 years ago, the themes it explores remain urgent and relevant.
In
The Empty Grave Anges Lisa Wegner and Cece Mlay follow Tanzanian families looking to retrieve the remains of their elders, who were killed by German colonisers, from western archives, where they are kept. This is a film “balancing between historical trauma and historical responsibility” as stated by its directors.
Berlinale Selection 2025 ends with a film about the taboo subject of death,
Ivo, by promising director Eva Trobisch. Ivo is a palliative carer, a physically and emotionally draining occupation. One of her patients, Solveigh, was a close friend even before her illness. A thorny love triangle develops between Solveigh, her partner Franz, and Ivo. Eva Trobisch was named one of Variety’s Directors to Watch in 2024 and won the Heiner Carow Prize at the Berlinale 2024, a prize awarded by DEFA for best emerging German director.
While cinephiles from all over the world will be gathering in wintery Berlin for the Berlinale 2025, in Cyprus we will be enjoying films from 2023 and 2024 selected by the Goethe-Institut Cyprus for its
Berlinale Selection 2025 programme.
