For the fourth year in a row, the Cena Berlim community invited me to dive into the vast Berlinale lineup and put together a list of recommendations based on the films I’ve already seen, a ritual I happily return to every winter. With 2026 shaping up to be a particularly strong year for cinema, the Berlin Film Festival becomes the first major A-list stop to offer a glimpse of what lies ahead. From impressive debuts to pop star mockumentaries, from the hottest Brazilian contemporary cinema to 1990s New Queer Cinema, here are some must-sees, (re)discoveries, and quiet standouts from this year’s program.

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WORRY TIME

Dir. Tom Brennan | UK | Infos + Tickets

Created by the German Association of Film Critics and inspired by Cannes’ Semaine de La Critique, Woche der Kritik is an unofficial parallel section to the Berlinale, taking place at Hackesche Höfe Kino and claiming more attention every year thanks to its consistently sharp, carefully curated lineup. This time, the event opens with an impressive debut centered on a filmmaker trying to make a film about the abuse suffered by a close friend - without that friend’s consent - while constantly struggling to find the “right” tone for it. As the project spirals, the film turns into a sharp reflection on authorship, ethics, and the way male voices keep filtering and reshaping women’s stories. This is a very original indie that moves freely between tones and genres without ever losing its narrative grip. One moment it plays as a biting, laugh-out-loud satire, the next as an unsettling psychological horror, with Cate Le Bon’s distinctive music shaping its uneasy, off-kilter mood. Precise, strange, and unexpectedly funny, this debut announces a bold new voice that deserves to be watched closely. Plus, Berlinale badge holders can attend Woche der Kritik free of charge.  [Critics Week]

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ISABEL

Dir. Gabe Klinger | Brazil, France | Infos + Tickets

Indie muse and former MTV VJ Marina Person writes and stars as a sommelier in São Paulo, stuck in a prestigious two Michelin star restaurant, increasingly disengaged from a job she no longer believes in and a boss she openly despises. Dreaming of opening her own wine bar, Isabel drifts through tastings and service shifts, caught between professional expertise and emotional exhaustion. Set against a quietly vibrant São Paulo, the film becomes a gentle and charming slice-of-life tale about failed dreams, quiet resilience, and the everyday negotiations we make between disappointment and the small pleasures that still make life feel shared. [Panorama]

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TRULY NAKED

Dir. Muriel d’Ansembourg | UK | Infos + Tickets

The gritty, unexpected and almost explicit opening sex scene of Muriel d'Ansembourg's first feature is enough to grab people's attention right away. But Truly Naked is far more interested in what surrounds sex than in sex itself. Following her successful short Fuck a Fan, the Dutch filmmaker returns to the porn industry, but this time as a working environment shaped by routine, misogyny, and emotional distance. The story centers around an introverted teenager who films and edits content for his father's struggling, home-based porn business, caught between financial pressure and family tension. His daily reality begins to shift when he befriends Nina, a feminist classmate who introduces him to a different idea of intimacy, one that is not based on transactions or performance. Direct, honest, and often daring, the film looks at desire, labor, and vulnerability with surprising clarity and restraint. [Perspectives]

OUR SECRET (Nosso Segredo)

Dir. Grace Passô | Brazil | Infos + Tickets

The heart of a large family quietly mourning the death of their patriarch is seen through the curious eyes of their youngest member, 7-year-old Tutu, who moves freely between relatives and loosely connects the large group of people. Meanwhile a series of strange things start happening in the big house where the film is set, giving the space a presence of its own. A talented playwright and a known actress in her homeland, Passô is no stranger to Brazilian audiences. Her film is one of the most interesting debuts coming from Brazil this year, always taking the unpredictable routes to talk about intimacy, race and power dynamics, turning the domestic space into a playful, emotionally layered puzzle. [Perspectives]

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THE MOMENT

Dir. Aidan Zamiri | USA | Infos + Tickets

The biopic-film concert genre has been quietly reinventing itself lately, loosening its rigid formulas and embracing something a bit messier and more self-aware. Recent experiments like The Nowhere Inn, with St. Vincent playing a fractured version of herself, or Alex Ross Perry’s Pavements about the band of the same name, have shown how elastic the genre can be. The Moment fits right into that lineage. Here, pop star and unapologetic film nerd Charli XCX plays a version of herself in an absurdly chaotic alternate timeline, where she caves to commercial pressure while preparing what is meant to be her first arena tour. Shot largely with handheld cameras and driven by A.G. Cook’s relentless, pulse-heavy score, the film blurs performance, persona, and exhaustion with sharp comic instinct. This isn’t a regular star-making spectacle but a darkly comic deconstruction of what happens when Brat summer refuses to end and celebrity becomes its own kind of prison. [Panorama]

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UCHRONIA

Dir. Fil Leropoulos | Greece, Netherlands | Infos + Tickets

This could well be the Orlando, My Political Biography of this year’s Berlinale, the hybrid docufiction by Paul B. Preciado that became one of the festival’s sensations in 2023. Uchronia is a fever-dream docu-essay, and much like Preciado’s film, it’s better experienced in the collective buzz of a packed theater. Here, Greek filmmaker Fil Leropoulos uses a poem by Arthur Rimbaud to launch a psychedelic trip through alternative histories, where the 19th-century rebel poet collides with revolutionary icons like Emma Goldman, David Wojnarowicz, and Marsha P. Johnson. Along the way, the film engages with experimental queer cinema legends such as Derek Jarman and Kenneth Anger, while exploring very current anxieties: can a decadent poet from 1873 diagnose today’s post-internet malaise and rising fascism? Executive produced by Charlie Kaufman and featuring familiar faces from Berlin’s cultural scene, this is a complex, smart, and often hilarious synesthetic rollercoaster that treats revolution not as nostalgia, but as an ongoing, unfinished conversation between a bunch of dissident freaks across time. [Forum Expanded]

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JOSEPHINE

Dir. Beth de Araújo | USA | Infos + Tickets

Fresh off its huge Sundance success, where it won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award last week, Beth de Araújo’s new film is a devastating gut punch. Following her provocative debut Soft & Quiet, the Brazilian-American filmmaker turns to a deeply personal story drawn from her San Francisco childhood. Eight-year-old Josephine (breakout Mason Reeves) witnesses a rape in Golden Gate Park, and her trauma spirals into psychological horror. Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan anchor the film as helpless parents, watching their daughter weaponize herself with toy guns and kitchen knives in a desperate bid for control. Shot with raw intimacy and occasional first-person POV, the film flirts with possession horror tropes before landing somewhere far scarier: the real world, where justice itself becomes another form of trauma. One of this year’s must see! [Competition]

ANYMART

Dir. Yusuke Iwasaki  | Japan | Infos + Tickets

Imagine if Kevin Smith’s Clerks were populated by the robotic, deadpan characters of a Wes Anderson film. It’s an easy but useful way to approach this hilariously poignant Japanese debut, which resists easy description. A teenage boy drifts through his shifts at a small convenience store, half asleep, until the arrival of a new employee disrupts his perfectly automated routine. From there, the film slips into something darker, as the ghosts of consumer culture quite literally begin to haunt the fluorescent aisles of the small market. Director Yusuke Iwasaki (whose own father ran a store for years) mixes deadpan horror with absurd comedy to capture millennial work anxiety and late-stage capitalism dread, all while asking if we're already trapped forever in the soul-crushing loop of scanning barcodes and restocking shelves. A truly hidden gem not to be missed. [Forum]

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IF I WERE ALIVE (Se Eu Fosse Vivo... Vivia)

Dir. André Novais Oliveira | Brazil | Infos + Tickets

With 11 films in this year’s lineup, it’s no secret that Brazilian cinema is having a moment. André Novais Oliveira is one of the bold new voices driving this wave of creativity and risk-taking overseas. His previous features, The Day I Met You (2023) and Long Way Home (2018) - both starring Grace Passô, who also premieres her directorial fiction debut this year (see Our Secret on this same list above) - confirm him as one of the most interesting Brazilian filmmakers working today. In If I Were Alive, Oliveira casts his own father in a story about a devoted elderly couple whose fifty-year love story takes a surreal turn when the wife’s sudden hospitalization sends the husband spiraling through disturbing visions that blur past and present. Oliveira's best film to date and definitely one of the highlights of this year’s lineup. [Panorama]

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THE WATERMELON WOMAN

Dir. Cheryl Dunye | USA | Infos + Tickets

With the Teddy Awards celebrating their 40th anniversary this year, the festival has prepared a standout selection to honor its queer prize. Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman, which won the Teddy in 1996, is a classic that deserves to be revisited. At the time, Dunye did something radical: she invented a Black lesbian actress from the 1930s, because Hollywood had erased the real ones. This fictional character, credited only as “The Watermelon Woman” in old race films, becomes the subject of Dunye’s mockumentary, where she plays herself as a video store clerk determined to uncover the mystery woman’s story. Blending fake archival footage, invented interviews, and real documentary techniques, Dunye creates an entire historical figure to expose the gaping hole where actual Black queer women should have been preserved in cinema history. One of the first features directed by a Black lesbian, it’s a playful yet pointed reminder that sometimes inventing history reveals more truth than facts alone. [Teddy 40]

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Wellington Almeida is a programmer, a film writer and a devoted cat lover (not necessarily in this order).