Jewish, Israeli and Palestinian narratives at the 76th Berlin International Film Festival unfold between memory, responsibility, artistic complexity, and persistent political controversy.

 By Oliver Bradley

The 76th edition of the Berlin International Film Festival kicks off with a programme that again places the Berlinale at the centre of global political, historical, and cultural debate. Jewish-, Israeli-, and Palestinian-related presences are woven across many festival sections, surfacing through filmmakers, subjects, protagonists, and long-standing artistic positions. As in previous years, these films will no doubt appear in a festival environment that is often charged by controversy, protest, and ideological pressure, particularly around Israel-related works – a context that frequently prioritises delegitimisation over engagement with complexity. All the more refreshing, then, that this year’s festival is being led by a jury president who has spent much of his career navigating, confronting, and resisting precisely such pressures.

Jury and Festival Leadership

Against this backdrop, the choice of jury leadership is anything but incidental. This year’s International Jury will be led by Wim Wenders, a decision that carries clear symbolic weight within a Jewish and post-war German context. Wenders’ cinema has long been associated with Germany’s moral landscape after 1945: Berlin as a city of rupture, absence, and responsibility following the Holocaust. His films have consistently treated memory not as abstraction but as lived ethical terrain. His public opposition to cultural boycotts of Israeli cinema situates his jury presidency squarely within ongoing debates about responsibility, dialogue, and cultural exchange at a moment when these questions remain highly contested.

Berlinale Camera

Beyond jury leadership, the festival’s tone is also shaped by its honorary distinctions. The only award whose recipient is already known, the Berlinale Camera, will be awarded to Max Richter, recognising his decisive influence on contemporary cinema through music. Richter’s work has shaped the emotional architecture of modern film, most notably through his score for Waltz with Bashir, one of the most influential Israeli films addressing war, trauma, and memory. His music consistently functions as moral atmosphere rather than illustration. Richter’s artistic trajectory is inseparable from his long-standing collaboration with his wife, visual artist and filmmaker Yulia Mahr. Together, their work engages questions of memory, displacement, and ethical responsibility, forming a shared artistic language grounded in historical awareness rather than spectacle.

Berlinale Special

If leadership and honorary awards set the framework, Berlinale Special once again forms the programme’s political and historical backbone. Films screened in this section, while not competing for the festival’s main awards, continue to attract some of the festival’s most visible public attention and red-carpet presence.

A central work among films screened in this section is Wax & Gold by iconic Austrian filmmaker Ruth Beckermann. Beckermann is one of Europe’s most important Jewish filmmakers, known for decades of work on antisemitism, post-war denial, and civic responsibility. Wax & Gold extends her essayistic approach, using her stay in Addis Ababa as a lens through which to examine history, perception, and the tension between surface and depth – a recurring concern in her engagement with unresolved pasts.

Also in Berlinale Special is Who Killed Alex Odeh?, directed by Jason Osder and William Lafi Youmans. The film reopens the 1985 assassination of Palestinian-American activist Alex Odeh. What begins as a meticulous cold-case investigation ultimately confronts the Israel-Palestinian conflict itself, tracing how its dynamics extend far beyond the region and into diaspora.

Completing the section is Tutu by Sam Pollard. The film traces the life and times of South Africa’s Archbishop Desmond Tutu as the country’s leading moral voice, alongside Nelson Mandela, during the anti-apartheid struggle of the last century. Tutu, although an outspoken and often controversial critic of Israel within his broader political worldview, remained unwavering in his stated hope for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

A key presence in the film is Jewish journalist Roger Friedman, who, as a journalist and writer – producer, documented Tutu for more than 35 years and played a central role in shaping the footage that ultimately informs this generally uplifting, even if at times Israel – critical, documentary.

Working alongside Friedman was photojournalist and cameraman Benny Gool, whose lens captured Tutu over decades and provided much of the visual material featured in the film.

Panorama and Panorama Dokumente

Moving from Berlinale Special into Panorama, the focus shifts from historical inquiry to lived political reality filtered through narrative intimacy. The Panorama section, whose audience award remains among the festival’s most coveted prizes, has long been a hotbed for politically charged storytelling. This year, that tradition continues with Danielle Arbid’s Only Rebels Win, starring Hiam Abbass. Set in crisis-ridden Beirut, the film centres on an unlikely love story between a woman with Palestinian roots and an undocumented Sudanese man. Abbass’ presence is central to the film’s resonance; as an Israeli Arab actress, her career has consistently navigated Palestinian identity, Israeli society, and international cinema.

In Panorama Dokumente, Jaripeo, co-directed by Efraín Mojica and Rebecca Zweig, immerses itself in hyper-masculine rodeo culture in Mexico. Zweig’s Jewish background, subtly informs the film’s attention to identity, memory, and belonging without becoming an explicit subject.

Both films are up for the Panorama Audience Award.

Forum and Forum Expanded

From Panorama’s audience-driven intensity, the programme moves into the Berlinale’s most uncompromising intellectual territory. The Forum remains the festival’s primary space for political reflection, experimentation, and emerging voices. This year, the section will screen Effondrement by Anat Even, an essayistic response to October 7, the Gaza war, and the questions of causality, grief, and responsibility that followed. The film refuses simplification and instead insists on ethical tension and sustained reflection.

Also in Forum is Prénoms by Nurith Aviv, whose work has long explored language, Hebrew, naming, and identity. Through names as cultural markers, the film reflects on belonging and continuity.

The Forum Expanded section, framed around unauthorised versions of history, gains additional resonance through the involvement of Israeli curator Shai Heredi, embedding Israeli intellectual perspectives into a section focused on erasure, counter-narratives, and contested memory. Among the films curated, Fruits of Despair by Iranian filmmaker Farahnaz Sharifi follows her attempt to make a film about the Israel – Palestinian conflict when a new war erupts around her, pulling her directly into another unfolding reality of violence. The film juxtaposes distant conflict with immediate danger, reflecting on how war reshapes both personal life and artistic perspective.

Berlinale Shorts

After the conceptual rigor of Forum and Forum Expanded, Berlinale Shorts brings Jewish identity into the sharpest competitive focus. Two films with clear Jewish identity are most directly foregrounded in this section, which is also the only one where Jewish-related works are positioned for core Berlinale prizes – the Silver Bears.

The section will screen Les juifs riches by Yolande Zauberman, which confronts Jewish identity, perception, and memory with sharp irony and political clarity, continuing Zauberman’s long engagement with post-Holocaust Jewish experience. Alongside it, Plan contraplan / Shot Reverse Shot, directed by Radu Jude and Adrian Cioflâncă, draws on Edward Serotta’s documentation of Jewish life in socialist Romania. The film examines how Jewish history is framed, archived, and remembered, placing antisemitism and historical responsibility at its core.

Berlinale Classics

From contemporary shorts, the programme turns toward cinematic history. In Berlinale Classics, which traditionally highlights restored works from bygone eras of the silver screen, Secrets of a Soul by G. W. Pabst returns in a new 4K restoration with innovative live musical accompaniment. The film features Jewish actors including Ilka Grüning, whose career reflects the rupture of Jewish life in early 20th-century European cinema.

Perspectives

The festival’s newest section, Perspectives, continues this exploration of entanglement and proximity in contemporary form. It includes Where To?, an Israeli-German co-production by Assaf Machnes. The film confines a Palestinian Uber driver and an Israeli passenger to a shared journey, using forced proximity as a metaphor for political entanglement, asymmetry, and unresolved reality. Also in Perspectives is Chronicles from the Siege by Abdallah Alkhatib. Rooted in lived experience under siege in Gaza, the film follows daily survival shaped by confinement, scarcity, and political violence within the broader context of the conflict with Israel. Although the film that foregrounds human endurance and the psychological toll of prolonged conflict, It remains a difficult subject matter that will call for critical, nuanced viewing rather than reflexive accusation or one-sided polemic against Israel.

Co-Production Series

Beyond the screening programme, Jewish relevance also emerges within the festival’s industry platforms. Within Co-Production Series, it appears not through Israeli subject matter but through Germany’s post-war moral discourse. The adaptation of Die Enkelin, based on the novel by Bernhard Schlink, is deeply embedded in questions of inherited guilt, historical responsibility, and the persistence of extremist ideology in post-war Germany – themes inseparable from Jewish historical experience in Europe.

Last but not least

While the official programme of the 76th Berlinale does not list a renewed screening of A Letter to David, screened at last year’s Berlinale Special section, the film nonetheless returns to Berlin in its expanded form. The “Completed Version” of Tom Shoval’s documentary about David Cunio – one of the hostages abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz on 7 October 2023 and among the last to be released from Gaza – will be shown during Berlinale week in Berlin. The screening takes place at Babylon Berlin, Rosa-Luxemburg-Strasse 30, 10178 Berlin. The new edition adds a new ending that was not included in last year’s Berlinale screening, incorporating his return and the immediate aftermath into the film.

Awards Context and Controversy

While Jewish-, Israeli-, and Palestinian-related films are largely absent from the main Competition this year, they remain eligible across Shorts and for numerous independent jury awards. In practice, most of these films will be competing for a wide range of independent jury prizes, which have traditionally played a decisive role in recognising politically and historically challenging works at the Berlinale.

As in previous editions, Israel-related films may find themselves screened within an atmosphere marked by protest and ideological framing. Public debate often shifts away from cinematic substance toward delegitimisation, sidelining works that attempt to engage with the complexity and internal contradictions of Israeli society and the broader Middle Eastern realities surrounding it. Against this backdrop, the 76th Berlinale will likely continue to assert itself, even this year, as a meeting point of ethical tensions rather than easy conclusions.

The Berlin International Film Festival will run from 12-22 February

Full programme can be found at www.Berlinale.de