Ana David is an independent curator and festival programmer for Berlinale’s Panorama section, the programme dedicated to showcasing boundary-pushing and unconventional contemporary cinema while being “explicitly queer, explicitly feminist, explicitly political”.
This is David’s eighth year on the selection committee, and she’s also held pivotal positions at festivals like Márgenes in Madrid, L’Alternativa in Barcelona, Queer Lisboa, BFI London Film Festival and IndieLisboa, developing an approach to film-finding that comes from a desire for fresh and transgressive voices. David is curious and seeks to connect different forms of artistic expression through the lens of queer art and theory. She took time away from the darkened screening room at Potsdamer Platz where she’s been viewing hundreds of films with her Berlinale colleagues to select the lineup that audiences will see on the big screen during February’s Berlinale.
How did you get into cinema curation?
I was still in college when I figured out that I loved film festivals; cinema I loved before, of course, but I was getting involved with film festivals and volunteering for Queer Lisboa which is the most important queer cinema festival in Portugal and also one of the best in Europe, with a very differentiated programme. One year they invited me to join the team, helping out with several things on the production side. I was still studying at the time, I felt very compelled to do it, and that was the start of things.
Were you studying cinema, then?
I did communication studies – learning the tools for critiquing, [having] a critical view of the world, and so I was being offered tools which are very useful to read art in general. Within the course there were subjects in cinema, history, etc., but it wasn’t entirely devoted to cinema. Which means my path has been a lot of learning things by myself, reading a lot, watching a lot.
So basically it started like that – a kind of accident, actually. I was invited to join a team that saw me eventually step up as programmer and then co-director of the festival, and I was there for five years. By the end I’d already graduated. That role defined how the rest of my path has been so far – responding to invitations and saying yes. My work at Queer Lisboa was fundamental to the way I engaged with cinema, teaching me a lot, and it’s this kind of cinema that I keep in touch with and try to integrate in all that I do. Afterwards I lived in different cities – Paris, London – doing different film work at festivals, such as Documentary Programmer for the London Film Festival in 2018, Curator for Batalha Centro de Cinema in Portugal and Festival Coordinator for Festival Scope in Paris.
I learned a lot from colleagues. This is the ideal of programming – the starting point is the discussion with your colleagues, and it’s very important to the curation and programming work that I do. And then in 2017, Paz Lázaro, who was at the time the head of Berlinale Panorama, invited me to join the advisory selection committee.
Was that a move to Berlin, or were you already based in the city?
I was living in Lisbon to begin with, and Paz came to the IndieLisboa festival as a juror. We knew each other a little bit from the Berlinale and I got invited to the Berlinale team on the spot through these connections. That year I helped out remotely on the programme, and the following year I started moving over to Berlin for the winter months for screening times. What else is there to do from October to December than shut yourself away with colleagues and watch films for three months? And there’s a strong, very alive nightlife scene here, as we both know, so it allowed me to discover that with the bit of energy I had left.
What else is there to do from October to December than shut yourself away with colleagues and watch films?
At Berlinale, there are many different sections – is each a representation of a particular ethos?
Yes, but there aren’t necessarily black-and-white thematic grids to each section. Maybe slightly with Generation and Panorama, because Generation is a big section aimed at youth. For us at Panorama, we’re aiming to showcase new transgressive cinema each year. We’re showcasing the artists, so it’s not up to us to decide ahead of time what the themes will be – it will entirely depend on what the artists and filmmakers bring to us every year.
So annually Panorama acts like a forum of 11 days of cinema where we can plunge into a contemporary vision of the world, many visions for that matter. For Berlinale as a whole, formal exploration is as important as thematics and worldviews. For us at Panorama, the work has to come with some sense of innovation into the formal aspect of cinema.
Do you find any cohesive links to the work that you screen each year?
There are certain topics that always come back, because they are universal to the human experience: sexuality, gender identity, of course political and societal topics, and governmental difficulties from different countries depending on the where in the world the artist is making work from, ecological concerns and so forth. Then each year there will be dots that are joined thematically.
Back in 2023, there were three films in Panorama that all brought in something special and different regarding dance music culture, or at least the experience of dance music: La Bête Dans La Jungle by Patric Chiha, After by Anthony Lapia and Drifter by Hannes Hirsch. All three engaged with or had visual representations of the experience of clubbing and different aspects of it, and by chance were all submitted that year. So it can happen, that filmmakers and artists across the world will be reflecting on certain aspects of the world. And post-Covid clubbing is one of the youth cultural expressions that’s been in reinvention since then.
What’s the logistical process that goes behind choosing the films we’ll be lining up to see?
It’s intense and beautiful every year. We have an allocated number of days where we are watching submissions, and we go through a list each day in duos. It could be a different colleague each week or every two weeks. It’s a solid critical approach which is rare – usually festivals programmers watch alone. This ensures a certainty in the choices we make at the end of the day. Then we recommend and discuss together with Michael Stütz, head of the Panorama section since June 2019 and co-director of film programming since July 2024. Michael will then watch the film, and as head curator he makes the final decision on every one. The [quality of the] selections rise[s] each year, which speaks to the volume and visions of submissions worldwide. So we are adapting to that, and this is the challenge – to ensure everything is watched rigorously.
What do you find unique to Berlin and its specific film scene?
When you think about Berlin compared to cities such as London, Paris, New York, Berlin is quite a mystery from the outside. It’s the city that I think is the most difficult to know. And you can only really get to know it if you live here and move here. So when I came here, unlike other cities that are famous for their film culture like Paris and London, I had to really live here to understand what it’s all about. Besides the Berlinale, there are no large-scale international film festivals or institutions with that kind of scope.
What I really appreciate about the independent film scene here is that we have independent Kinos in each Kiez, and no one knows what’s in these small communities until you’re living here. They are punkish and DIY, with odd personal choices of showing, for example, the same film every week, like Wings of Desire – I saw that at Lichtblick-Kino. Watching that film locally in Berlin was super special. It’s also that you can watch such a huge offering of rich and diverse cinema, whether that’s at Arsenal or a small Kino near your house. I really appreciate Sinema Transtopia in Wedding, they have been amazing at curating and creating new audiences with their repertoire and idea of a transnational cinema. It’s worrying actually – I saw via their Instagram post that the Senate has [announced] huge cuts to them, to the point that they may have to close. I have no idea when this goes to print where they’ll stand.
We’re witnessing in real time the dismantling of cultural institutions in Berlin, and there’s been some controversy – the film No Other Land, which won both jury and audience awards at last year’s Berlinale, was initially said to have “antisemitic tendencies” by Berlin’s city website before being corrected, and the filmmakers were criticised by German politicians. Amid all this, when the movie hit Berlin theatres in November, screening events sold out. Does it feel more important than ever that audiences get to see these films?
No Other Land is a beautiful example of how even with funding cuts happening, these films will still be successful and can open commercially in cinemas despite institutional setbacks, which also speaks to the importance of the private sector – distributors and exhibitors. I’m so pleased and grateful that that film was able to open in cinemas.
What are you excited about with this year’s Berlinale?
I’m so excited about Todd Haynes being the president of the jury. With Todd Haynes, and a new era of totally transgressive cinema and what that brings, I’m excited about the idea of trans cinema. Berlinale has a history of fighting for trans cinema representation. In 2024 we had I Saw the TV Glow by Jane Schoenbrun, I Don’t Want to Be Just A Memory by Sarnt Utamachote; in 2023 Kokomo City by D. Smith, Orlando, ma biographie politique by Paul B. Preciado and Mutt by Vuk Lungulov-Klotz. Then there was Jessica Dunn Rovinelli’s So Pretty from 2019, which also comes to mind. As a curator and programmer, I’m excited and interested in what trans cinema is bringing forward.
In 2025 I look forward to seeing what new filmmakers and titles and ideas of trans cinema are brought to the front. We also have the Teddy Award, the queer film award at the Berlin International Film Festival, which puts a spotlight on the whole of queer cinema at Berlinale.
- Berlin International Film Festival, Feb 13-23, tickets
