2025 | Berlinale Shorts
75, Hooray!
Happy Doom by Billy Roisz
To mark the Berlinale’s 75th anniversary, Berlinale Shorts is presenting six treasures from the festival archive that celebrate the diversity of short films and invite you to (re)discover them – from abstract experiment to documentary observation, from the fictionalisation of reality to the creation of fantastic worlds.
A festival is always a place of encounters: between people and art, between art and art, between people and people. And so, these short films are also about encounters, be they onscreen or behind the camera:
Light meets surfaces – Happy Doom makes the screen and speakers vibrate with pulsating colours and sounds, abstract structures and noises. A short and sharp opening to the programme from video artist and musician Billy Roisz, whose work has been featured in Berlinale Shorts four times.
David OReilly with fellow jury member Sandra Hüller, the award winners Justine Triet and Trevor Anderson and fellow jury member Emily Jacir in 2012
Justine Triet and Sandra Hüller first met each other in 2021 at Berlinale Shorts when Hüller – in her capacity as a member of the International Short Film Jury – presented Triet with an award certificate for her short film Vilaine fille mauvais garçon. Eleven years later, Hüller starred in Triet’s masterpiece Anatomy of a Fall, for which both received numerous accolades.
Tant qu'il nous reste des fusils à pompe was the first collaboration between Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel and thus marks the debut of a directing duo which continues to make outstanding short and feature films to this day. In 2014, this film earned them the Golden Bear; in 2025, nine films and ten years later, they are participating for the fourth time in the Berlinale Shorts competition with Comment ça va?.
PARKing CHANce with the Golden Bear in 2011
Another well-attuned team is PARKing CHANce. Behind it are the renowned Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook and his brother, the artist Park Chan-kyong. The two gave themselves this playful pseudonym because they feel the chance of finding a parking space in Seoul is as slim as the opportunity to work free of technical, financial and content-related restrictions as an artist. But when this rare opportunity arises, they are delighted to take it and a film as idiosyncratic as Paranmanjang (Night Fishing) emerges, for which they received the Golden Bear in 2011.
Patti Smith, on the other hand, never met Jean Genet. Nevertheless, or perhaps because of this, she has the strong desire to place three small stones on his grave in Morocco. Her friend of many years, Frieder Schlaich, accompanies her. She speaks, he films, they wander through the city, a boy joins them, the promise is kept: Three Stones for Jean Genet.
Vita Lakamaya by Akihito Izuhara
Every few years, we are blessed with a chance to immerse ourselves in the cosmos of the animator Akihito Izuhara. And every time, we experience an enchanting encounter with wondrous creatures and worlds, often hidden in the tall grass and drawn with delicate coloured pencil strokes, as in Vita Lakamaya.
As different as all these encounters are, it is always a pleasure for us to create a space for them. A space that enables deliberate or coincidental meetings, that offers a place for friction and appreciation; for film festivals are perhaps the only place where the audience can express their interest and/or gratitude towards the films and their makers – be it with applause during the end credits, open-minded questions in the Q&As, a post-screening conversation in the cinema foyer or a chance encounter in the hustle and bustle of the festival.