Claudia Roth and Mariette Rissenbeek Lay Down the Law as Political Speeches Dominate Berlin Opening Ceremony: ‘Hatred Is Not on Our Guest List’

Berlin Film Festival 2025 Dates 

Following the accession of King Charles in September 2022, a number of changes that come with a new reign were automatically enacted - including one which affected Queen Camilla and Princess Beatrice. This move saw the pair both added to the list of Counsellors of State - meaning they can step in for the King if he is abroad, ill or becomes otherwise incapacitated and hold the powers of the sovereign in an emergency.

Married At First Sight Australia has made a welcome return to TV screens, with a new set of singletons hoping to meet their perfect match at the end of the aisle.The Australian edition landed on screens in the UK on Monday, 26 February on E4 - delighting MAFS fans. In the first episode, we saw Cassandra and Tristan get hitched as well as Sara and Tim. However, it was Sara and Tim who had viewers talking, as things between them quickly took a downwards turn.

A new weather map has shown exactly when and where it could snow in the UK this week with temperatures plummeting as we head into March. The mercury will drop to -3C in Scotland this weekend, while England and Wales will struggle to stay two or three degrees above freezing, according to WX Charts.

Palme d’Ors don’t grow on trees, so it’s small wonder that the world has fallen for Justine Triet’sAnatomy of a Fall, and the outstanding lead performance of Sandra Hüller, since it won the Cannes Film Festival’s top prize. Hüller’s turn dominates the ‘sort of’ courtroom drama of the film, in which her German novelist — also called Sandra — is accused of pushing her French husband Samuel (Samuel Theis), also a writer, from the top floor of their alpine home. Sandra maintains he fell, or jumped, and the film spends much of its runtime chewing over the truth, though never revealing it.

Pussy Riot protested Alexei Navalny’s death outside the Russian embassy in Berlin on Sunday (February 18), accusing Vladimir Putin and the Russian government of being “murderers”.The activist group staged the protest outside the embassy following the Russian opposition leader’s death on Friday (February 16).Details surrounding his death remain scarce, though authorities at the prison where he was being held said he suffered “sudden death syndrome”, according to the BBC. The state-run RT suggested via an unknown source that he died from a blood clot.Pussy Riot held large signs reading ‘Murderers’ at the demonstration.

Russian Pussy Riot Dissident Nadya Tolokonnikova has welcomed a pledge by Alexei Navalny’s widow Yulia Navalnaya to carry on his fight for democracy, following his death in an Arctic penal colony last week.

Hillary Clinton and Sharon Stone shared the stage at the annual Cinema for Peace funder raiser in Berlin on Monday night with the latter presenting the former U.S. secretary of state with the NGO’s Cinema for Peace Award.

EXCLUSIVE: Martin Scorsese is returning to the Berlin Film Festival tomorrow for the first time in a decade. The cinema legend, currently on the awards circuit with latest epic Killers Of The Flower Moon, will be feted with the Berlinale‘s highest honor, its lifetime achievement Golden Bear.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic U2 has been performing Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over” in concert at the band’s Sphere residency recently, and before Saturday night’s show, the introduction to that song extended far longer than usual, as Bono paid tribute to the dream of Alexei Navalny, the Russian dissident who died in prison days earlier. The singer spoke up for the freedom of the Ukrainian people and against Russian leader Vladimir Putin — who many believe is directly responsible for the political prisoner’s still-unexplained death — before leading the crowd in a chant of Navalny’s name. “Next week it’ll be two years since Putin invaded and tried to destroy the hard-won freedoms” of the Ukrainian people, Bono said.

A youthful crowd of industry professionals filed into a bustling room at the Gropius Bau Saturday afternoon for the inaugural AfroBerlin symposium here at the Berlin Film Festival. 

The first-ever edition of AfroBerlin put Africa in the spotlight at the Berlin Film Festival and in one key session asked how festivals, streamers, and the wider industry can — and should — support films and filmmakers from the continent.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Gael García Bernal and Renate Reinsve (“The Worst Person in the World”) star as lovers caught in an unusual bind in Italian director Piero Messina’s unconventional sci-fi film “Another End,” which is competing in Berlin. Set in a near-future when a new technology exists that can put the consciousness of a dead person back into a living body in an attempt to ease the grief of separation, the English-language film sees Bernal play Sal, a man who loses his wife. Reinsve plays Zoe, the woman who rents her body for the implantation of Bernal’s wife’s consciousness.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The arid area of the West Bank known as Masafer Yatta, which in the 1990s was designated as a live-fire training zone where the Israeli military exercises full control, is home to Basel Adra, a young Palestinian activist who has been fighting the mass expulsion of his community by the Israeli authorities since childhood. “No Other Land,” which screens in Berlin’s Panorama section, documents the gradual demolition of houses and entire villages by the military in the region using bulldozers. The documentary was made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective of four young activists: Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor and Adra.

Jaka Bizilj, the founder of the Berlin-based Cinema for Peace Foundation which organized the airlift from Russia of opposition activist Alexei Navalny after his poisoning in 2020, has responded to his sudden death in an Arctic Circle jail on Friday.

Festival season 2024 is well underway, Insiders, as our team decamps to Berlin. That and plenty more news to report from around the world to follow. Jesse Whittock with you. Sign up for the Insider newsletter here.

The Berlin Film Festival officially kicked off this evening with an eventful opening ceremony at the Berlinale Palast theater in the German capital. 

Right from the start, there is no doubt where we are. Narrow, gray streets in the dim daylight of winter, peat hills between cramped villages, a crow sitting on a church spire: this is western Ireland in the ’80s, when the Celtic Tiger was yet to roar and jobs were scarce, divorce was illegal, condoms available only on prescription and central heating unknown.

feisty press conference, the Berlin Film Festival is about to get even more political with a demonstration defending democracy that will be held right before the start of opening night festivities. Berlinale organizers have planned this demonstration to highlight their decision to disinvite members of the far right political party AfD. “By disinviting the AfD, the Berlinale has clearly positioned itself against the right wing extremism in Germany.

The build-up to the 74th Berlin Film Festival (Feb 15 – Feb 25) has been highly politicised and the international jury press conference this morning was no different.