Every movie looks better on the big screen, and Berlin is also home to so many iconic cinemas and filmmakers. From film festivals to special screenings, these are the top upcoming events for all the cinephiles out there, all handed to you on a silver screen!
We order our listings with what’s coming up next at the top. That way, you’ll never miss out.
Wanda (1970), D: Barbara Loden
Wanda finally graces Berlin Kinos, leaving the city to witness the afterlife of a film that refused to stay buried. Written, directed by and starring Barbara Loden, it originally slipped past audiences: too quiet, too bleak, too uninterested in pleasing anyone but a few arthouse fans. The film follows a working-class woman who, boozed up, poor and out of luck, leaves her family and goes on the run with a bank robber. Loden’s camera never leers, never insists; it simply observes, and in that restraint lies its power. Silences stretch, landscapes press in and Wanda’s drift becomes existential.
- Yorck Kinogruppe, starts Apr 9, details
Human Rights Film Festival Berlin
The eighth edition of the Human Rights Film Festival Berlin is an event where the cinema isn’t just intended to reflect the world – it interrogates it. Operating under the motto ‘Where Stories Fight Back’, it brings together 24 international documentary films that grapple with the defining crises of our era head on. Organised by Action Against Hunger in cooperation with Greenpeace, the Berlin-based festival has built up a reputation for spotlighting films that confront injustice without blinking an eye. The 2026 edition continues that tradition, placing particular emphasis on stories of resistance. Festival co-director Lydia Spiesberger, who leads the event alongside Jan Sebastian Friedrich-Rust, says their motto is intentionally direct. “We want to send a clear signal against the rise of populism,” she explains. “The focus is on films that address the pressing challenges of our time, from climate justice to global humanitarian crises. The aim is to reclaim space for voices and realities of life that are too often ignored.” Expect plenty of films with this mood and tone.
- Various location, Apr 10-18, details
Achtung Berlin – New Berlin Film Award
Back for its 22nd edition, Achtung Berlin is a festival to pay attention to! The festival screens new work coming out of the Berlin-Brandenburg region, giving up-and-coming filmmakers a platform to get their work out there. This year’s competition offers the wide aesthetic range you’d expect from it, but a few thematic patterns quickly emerge. There’s a noticeable run of episodic storytelling and a strong contingent of films rooted in Berlin itself, with the city appearing less as backdrop than as a shifting landscape of competing realities. What stands out most, however, is the prominence of complex female protagonists. Across the range of selected works, we meet women navigating wildly different circumstances: life as a single, relationships, sisterhoods, positions of authority, grief, even life inside care institutions. They’re frequently bold and self-assured characters, but they’re also never flattened into symbols of strength. Vulnerability remains part of the picture as they push, sometimes quietly, for autonomy and space on their own terms. Berlin, meanwhile, looms throughout the programme as a city of contradictions: a place where personal stories and larger social tensions inevitably collide.
- Various locations, Apr 15-22, details
fantasy filmfest nights
fantasy filmfest nights is always a great place to scope out films that will be the talk of the town for months to come, and this year’s edition has plenty of exciting premieres. Take Oscar-nominated director Jan Komasa’s latest, Good Boy, due for release later this summer. The film is a thriller that follows the story of Tommy (Anson Boon), a 19-year-old thrill-seeking delinquent who pushes his friends toward ever more violent stunts for social media clout, until the tables turn and he’s abducted by an unknown stranger. Another highlight is Eduardo Casanova’s Silence, a Spanish work reimagining the vampire myth in order to explore historically significant events, spanning from the Black Death to the AIDS crisis in 1980s Spain. The programme also features more nuanced interpretations of the fantasy genre, such as Rosebrush Pruning, a new take on Greek weird wave that premiered at the Berlinale and stars Elle Fanning, Pamela Anderson, Riley Keough and Jamie Bell, or a straight-up slice of Japanese horror with Yuriyan Retriever’s Mag Mag. There are a lot of fantasies to explore over the course of the festival.
- Zoo Palast, Apr 16-19, details
Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair (2006), D: Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino himself specifies how Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, his full two-part revenge epic, was intended to be seen: on the silver screen – maximal, delirious. It isn’t just parts one and two stitched together; it’s a director’s cut, uncorked and unrepentant, allowing the pulp to pirouette from cross-genre, mashed-up grit to operatic heartbreak. On a laptop it’s great. On a cinema screen, steel flashing, blood arcing like calligraphy, Uma Thurman towering in bridal white fury, it’s colossal.
- Yorck Kinogruppe, starts Apr 17, details
Queer Media Society at KLICK Kino
Florian Gärtner will present the restored version of his episodic film Niemand außer mir (Nobody but Me) (1995). The film captures that volatile threshold between adolescence and adulthood when life suddenly feels like a series of urgent, irreversible decisions. Its young characters find themselves navigating a familiar maze of contradictions: the desire for independence, the weight of expectation and stubborn pull of the worlds they’re trying to leave behind. As five loosely connected episodes, the film moves through heterosexual and queer relationships, the frustrations of school and university life and the age-old dilemma of growing up in a small town and wanting to escape, while feeling oddly anchored to the past. Gradually, these fragments cohere into a portrait of a generation caught between adaptation and departure. What gives the film its distinctive texture is the way it was made. Gärtner developed the episodes and dialogue collaboratively with his young, amateur cast, drawing on their experiences and conflicts, meaning the film’s lived-in authenticity often feels closer to documentary. First shown around 30 years ago as part of Das Kleine Fernsehspiel, the restored version now offers a fresh look at this quietly resonant snapshot of youth in transition.
- KLICK Kino, Apr 22, details
ALFilm Festival – Arab Film Festival Berlin
The 17th edition of ALFILM – Arab Film Festival Berlin lands with plenty of discovery, debate and the occasional surprise. Opening the festival is Palestine 36, directed by Annemarie Jacir. Set on the brink of the Great Palestinian Revolt, the film stages 1936 as a lived experience: strikes, resistance, betrayal, fracture. Featuring an international cast, including Hiam Abbas, Liam Cunningham and Dhafer L’Abidine, the German premiere, happening ahead of its national release in the UK, promises sweep and sting in equal measure. Beyond the opener, ALFILM’s selection surveys contemporary Arab cinema across the region and diasporas, varied in form and fierce in perspective. The Spotlight this year: ‘Sudan: New Projections – Retrospectives, Revolutions, and Restorations’, will put Sudanese filmmaking in focus. Guest curated by Talal Afifi of the Sudan Film Factory, the programme places new works alongside restored archival films, mapping a cinema forged through revolution, exile and resilience. Expect context, confrontation and the thrill of rediscovery. The festival goes beyond film and also features masterclasses, panels, an exhibition and a party at Festsaal Kreuzberg.
- Various locations, Apr 22-28, details
Radical Frame Film Festival
The Radical Frame Film Festival returns to Lichtblick-Kino for the 12th edition of its Short Film Series: a programme that feels less like a sidebar and more like a statement of intent. During the course of the festival, audiences are invited to dive into a carefully assembled selection of short works from across the globe. Selected films are formally daring, emotionally precise and unafraid of risk. Several arrive with the imprimatur of major international festivals behind them, and others come to Berlin quietly, screening in Germany for the very first time. Together, they offer a snapshot of contemporary filmmaking at its most alert and alive. The films will be introduced by festival director Valter Foschini, whose curatorial eye continues to shape Radical Frame as a space for discovery rather than repetition. All films screen in their original language with English subtitles, inviting audiences to listen closely and to look even closer.
- Lichtblick-Kino, Apr 27-28, details
The Devil Wears Prada 2, D: David Frankel
The sequel to The Devil Wears Prada could go either way. Either it’s going to be a glossy retread or a sly update on ambition and aging in heels. After the fizzy surprise of Freakier Friday, I’m cautiously optimistic. If it doesn’t take itself too seriously, and if it aims for pleasure over prestige, this all-star cast could deliver something genuinely fun. Best case? A sharp, champagne-bright night at the cinema with all the old favourites and a load more celebrities to kick your Louboutins at.
- Various cinema, starts Apr 30
