India at Berlinale 2026
Jury Members, Berlinale Talents and more

Berlinale, unarguably the most-momentous film-viewing spectacle in Europe, kickstarts this week. The foremost public film festival in Europe, Berlinale in its 76th edition, promises to be edgy, political, tender and pathbreaking as every year. The vital event in Berlin’s culture calendar showcases gritty documentaries to compelling crowd-pleasers and avant garde short films to retrospectives. There is something to savour in every genre and format.

For two weeks in February, Germany’s capital city, Berlin becomes the stomping ground for celebrities, industry professionals and movie-goers. Berlinale prides itself upon being a public festival and takes place from 12-22 February 2026. This year there are fewer glitzy Hollywood star vehicles but more European new wave auteurs, arthouse gems, political thrillers and body horrors. Berlinale aims to please film lovers of every shade.

The festival received more than 8,000 submissions from hundreds of countries this year, according to festival director Tricia Tuttle. The programming team distilled the submissions and handpicked a selection of films that confront the pressing political, ecological, social, and personal issues of our time.

Over and above film screenings, the festival also hosts the EFM, European Film Market, that functions as the avenue for international film and media professionals to meet and ink deals. The Berlinale Co-Production Market brings together industry representatives and media professionals involved in international projects. Berlinale’s World Cinema Fund, launched in 2024, offers funding for deserving international artists with promising project ideas.

Subcontinental representation – Focus on India

The subcontinent is well represented this year with two independent feature films one each in Forum and Generation K Plus sections, one digitally restored film in the Berlinale Classics section, two short films and one documentary. Judging the competition films this year along with the jury president the German director Wim Wenders is Shivendra Singh Dungarpur an Indian director, producer, and archivist as a jury member. Filmmaker Shaunak Sen, whose All That Breathes was nominated for Oscars in 2022, is part of the Berlinale Documentary Award Jury. Screenwriter Saagar Gupta (Evening Shadows) will be on the jury of Teddy Awards. India’s offerings range from independent filmmaking giants and festival regulars like Rima Das and stalwarts like Madhusree Dutta alongside promising young short filmmakers. Besides, on the sidelines of the festival the Berlinale Talents Program is hosting seven Indian film professionals including Anadi Athaley, Vedant Srinivas, Subarna Dash, Tanushree Das, Thanikachalam SA, Kislay and Devraj Bhaumik.

Breakdown of Indian offerings at the Berlinale

Feature Films

Rima Das, who has been bringing her feature films since 2019, is no stranger to Berlinale. Das often makes films probing the pains of children while growing up with emphasis on life in rural Assam. Her new film Not a Hero is no exception. It follows Mivan, an eleven-year-old boy whose displacement from urban life to village causes disruption in his daily life. Not a Hero follows Mivan while he grapples with the sudden change and adjusts to the slower rhythms of life in the countryside.
  Das has an exceptionally keen eye for selecting and working with child actors – as she has exemplified in her previous films Bulbul Can Sing and Village Rockstars. Not a Hero is premiering in the Generation Kplus segment where it stands to win the Crystal Bear award.

The Tamil film Members of the Problematic Family, directed by R Gowtham a poet turned filmmaker, will be screened in the Forum section. Forum is reserved for films where unconventional narratives and fresh perspectives are explored and from the looks of it, R Gowtham’s film fits the bill perfectly.

Members of the Problematic Family is a film about dealing with the sudden death of a family member and how grief shapes memory in mysterious ways.

Short Films

There are two short films from India this year namely, A Circle as the Center of the Whole in Forum Expanded and Abracadabra in Generation Kplus. Utkarsh’s A Circle as the Center of the Whole orbits Delhi and its fringes and investigates its sites of archaeological excavation. It is at once a meditation of what it means to live precariously, in a city where threats lurk everywhere around the corner.

Abracadabra is largely set in a school bus and contemplates over what shapes childhood friendships and the prejudices that shape children at an impressionable age.

Documentary

Renowned Indo-German filmmaker and curator Madhusree Dutta returns to documentary making after twenty years with her Forum documentary Flying Tigers. Dutta travels to her mother’s homeland of Assam in the film to examine her Alzheimer’s addled mother’s recollection of tigers. The makers are claiming it a genre-defying docu fiction because it mixes, “interviews, archival material, performances, animation and musical numbers,” to craft an intimate work.

Berlinale Classics

One of the most exciting offerings from India this year is Arundhati Roy's In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones. The film from 1990 is restored and being screened in the Classics section of Berlinale. Largely unavailable to watch widely, except for pirated uploads on the internet, the film is now given a fresh lease of life. It is a zeitgeisty time capsule that captured the academia of the late 1970s. Encouragingly, there is reason to believe that the film could find a wider audience in India after this restoration and screening at Berlinale.

Goethe Institut India will bring articles, interviews, reviews and on the ground updates on our social media channels from the festival.