The destructive nature of dementia has been a source of inspiration for many a filmmaker, but perhaps never quite as unvarnished, carnal and discomforting as in Lance Hammer’s Queen At Sea. Eighteen years after his lauded debut Ballast, the independent director returns with a gut-wrenching drama that questions our understanding of intimacy and sexuality, agency and care. In it, a family’s life is upended by the rapidly declining health of Leslie, a dementia-stricken artist. She’s tended to by both her husband and daughter, but the two caregivers butt heads over Leslie’s best interests. This deeply touching drama was awarded with the Silver Bear Jury Prize at the Berlinale.

After acclaimed films such as Evil Does Not Exist, Ryūsuke Hamaguchi moves his camera to France for the first time. Virginie Efira plays a care home director whose understanding of dignity is transformed by meeting a seriously ill Japanese playwright. Through patient observation, silences and conversations, Hamaguchi explores chance, fate and life-changing encounters.

Hope keeps one going, but it can also hold captive. In the South African docu-fiction hybrid Variations on a Theme, nearly eighty-year-old Hettie is still waiting for compensation for her father's military service, despite being lied to time and again. Who can blame her for continuing to dream? Directors Jason Jacobs and Devon Delmar, recognised as rising talents at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, paint a serene portrait, rooted in the landscape and local community. Recurring imagery gently recounts its own, unfinished story, full of bittersweet poetry. As the South African-raised crooner Al Bowlly sings during the closing credits: “Dreaming the lonely night through.”

“Families can be complicated,” is heard at the wedding party in Dao. The latest film by Alain Gomis, Silver Bear winner for Félicité (2017) and a Berlinale regular, intertwines a wedding in France with a memorial ceremony in Guinea-Bissau within the same Afro-French family. At the heart of it all is a woman named Gloria, as both a mother and a daughter. More than ever, the French-Senegalese director drew from his personal experiences, before – primarily through improvisation – allowing his ensemble to explore for themselves the love and sorrow united in rituals. Gomis blends experienced actors with non-professional performers and fiction with a (‘behind the scenes’) documentary approach.

In 1858, Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House as governess to two precocious children. Her polished manners hide a gruesome appetite and a trail of dead bodies. Maika Monroe plays her with wicked delight, while the movie mixes gore, black comedy and gothic unease. The result is a playful horror flick where the Victorian facade cracks before us.

Born from the cataclysmic 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, this immersive journey follows Kesuma, a castaway struggling to survive on a remote island. As isolation and nature reshape his world, reality gives way to something dreamlike and elemental. Rich in sound and atmosphere, the film becomes a sensory meditation on humanity’s fragile place within the natural world.

In Moscas, Mexican director Fernando Eimbcke tells the story of Olga, who rents out a room to a father and his nine-year-old son Christian while the father spends time with his hospitalised wife. As Olga and Christian grow closer, the film explores connection, loss and vulnerability through quiet observation, subtle humor and retro video games.

Summer beckons promisingly by the pool, where La Maestra and Paula are training intensively to be selected for a championship. Even when they’re not doing laps, the best friends are found spending their time together by going plane-spotting, waiting for a solar eclipse or colourfully chalking the sidewalks of Mexico City. Their friendship however transforms when Paula becomes the victim of sexual violence at a party. In her impressive debut film, Mexican filmmaker Fernanda Tovar focuses on La Maestra’s gentle but clumsy attempts to help Paula deal with her trauma. Tovar emphasises the colour in her characters’ lives and, despite the darkness, has them bathing in a sea of light.

Twin sisters Jean and Joan (Kate and Rooney Mara) speak in unison, dream the same dreams and love the same man… who is taking them to court. A strange but - mostly - true story, that’s tailor-made for Werner Herzog. Bucking Fastard premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where in 2025 the iconic German director was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.

The 1986 World Cup quarter-final between Argentina and England was far more than a football match. Maradona’s infamous “Hand of God” goal made history, but the game also carried the weight of the Falklands War. The Match revisits the fierce rivalry, political tensions and clashes that surrounded the game.

Resisting all types of easy categorisation, Syrian director Rand Abou Fakher’s full length feature debut Why Do I See You In Everything? is a disorienting hybrid documentary that contrasts violence with tenderness, and displacement with belonging. A poetic plaint that proves home truly is where the heart is, by focusing on the shared history of two lifelong friends.

Padraic McKinley’s gripping debut throws Ethan Hawke into a brutal fight for freedom. In 1933, convict Samuel Murphy must smuggle a fortune in gold through unforgiving wilderness to escape prison and save his young daughter from adoption. With a handpicked crew, he faces a nerve-shredding ordeal of distrust, betrayal, violence and exhaustion.