German Films at Winter and Spring Film Festivals

While the world’s attention turns to the Berlinale each February for the year’s most anticipated new German films, audiences in the US and Canada don’t need to wait to see their share of exciting German cinema. From major industry events like Sundance to insider favorites like Palm Springs, festivals across the region showcase works of all genres from established to emerging talents alike.

Read more about each festival below and check back for more as further festivals announce their lineups!

Palm Springs International Film Festival
January 2–12, 2026
Germany takes the spotlight in this year’s “Country Focus” section at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, with favorites like Sound of Falling and Miroirs No. 3 joining Albert Oehlen’s Udo Kier-led self-portrait Bad Painter, Michael Kofler’s 1960s family drama of political insurgency A Land Within, and Jan-Ole Gerster’s sun-washed Hitchcockian thriller Islands in the ten-film selection. The festival also hosts a special repertory screening of Konrad Wolf’s Stars in celebration of the East German director’s centennial.

Sundance Film Festival
January 22–February 1, 2026
This edition of the US’s most influential film festival includes Shame and Money by Germany-based Kosovar director Visar Morina (Exile) which follows a family forced to leave their village to eke out a life in the hyper-capitalist city, where instability pushes them to the limits of their dignity. Padraic McKinley’s directorial debut The Weight sees Ethan Hawke as a convict at a Depression-era Oregon work camp seeking to reunite with his daughter. The film, a major German production, was shot in the Bavarian forest.

At the festival’s awards ceremony on January 30, Shame and Money was presented with the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic! The jury noted Morina’s “powerful and unique portrayal of human dignity in contemporary Kosovo” and his “deep empathy for his characters in a crucial moment in which they are beginning again.”

Slamdance Film Festival
February 19–25, 2026
World premiering in the documentary competition at Los Angeles’ independent film festival is Philip Schaeffer’s House 4, which traces a year in the lives of the inmates and staff at a Berlin youth prison.

New York International Children’s Film Festival
February 28–March 15, 2026
Kids and adults alike can catch Seemab Gul’s Ghost School, which follows 10-year-old Pakistani girl Rabia as she investigates her school’s closing. With her neighbors offering explanations ranging from the evasive to the supernatural—perhaps the school is being haunted by a jinn!—Rabia sets off on her own courageous journey to find the truth.

Cinequest
March 10–22, 2026
Screening at this Silicon Valley festival, Alison Kuhn’s Holy Meat sees a recently canceled theater director, a young butcher, and a mysterious Danish priest leading a chaotic, blasphemous Passion play—their village’s first—in a clumsy attempt to save their local parish. Holy Meat was presented with the festival’s Best Comedy Film Award!

South by Southwest
March 12–18, 2026
SXWS, the annual celebration of media and performance in Austin, TX, presents Stella Marie Markert’s darkly comic Thanks for Nothing starring Lea Drinda (Sound of Falling) and Jan Bülow (The Universal Theory) as part of a group of teenagers living in an anarchic group home of their own design and struggling against abandonment, disillusionment, and absurdity.

Berlin & Beyond Film Festival
March 19–23, 2026
Hosted annually by Goethe-Institut San Francisco, the Berlin & Beyond Film Festival brings the best of the previous year’s new German cinema to the Bay Area. Alongside favorites like festival opener KÖLN 75, Miroirs No. 3, Amrum, and A Land Within, audiences can catch Burhan Qurbani’s gang-war Shakespeare adaptation No Beast. So Fierce. and Mia Maariel Meyer’s Youth 4 German Cinema winner 22 Lengths. Mala Emde (KÖLN 75) will receive the Spotlight Award in Acting.