Catch the best of this year’s German films!

Fall is film festival season in North America—and a great time to catch the best of this year’s German films! We’ve gathered five German titles to watch out for as they make their way to theaters in the US and Canada, many of them for the first time since their European premieres.

Seen them all? You can also catch Silent Friend, Ildikó Enyedi’s quiet observation on the relationship between humans and nature; Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay’s conspiracy thriller Hysteria; the haunting miniDV documentary With Hasan in Gaza by Kamal Aljafari; and the biopic of English surrealist Leonora Carrington Leonora in the Morning Light by Lena Vurma and Thor Klein—all screening at North American festivals this fall.

For even more exciting German titles, the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles and the American Cinematheque bring the 19th annual German Currents Film Festival to audiences in Southern California from October 17 to 21. Natja Brunckhorst’s beloved historical heist film Two to One opens the festival, whose selection also includes favorites like Bernard Wenger’s shape-shifting comedy Peacock, Mariko Minoguchi’s “December” from the true crime series ZEIT Verbrechen, and Fabian Stumm’s queer tragicomedy Sad Jokes. Don’t miss it!

Mascha Schilinski, Sound of Falling

Schilinski’s impressive sophomore feature has already earned several accolades since its world premiere in Cannes, including the Cannes Jury Prize and the selection by Germany as its contender for Best International Feature and the 2026 Oscars®. The film weaves together the lives of four generations of women and girls living in the same farmhouse. A group of sisters in an austere family in the 1920s, a young woman at the end of World War II, a GDR-era swimmer, and two unlikely friends in the present day all contend with the brutality of patriarchal violence and the fragility of human life. With striking performances from Lena Urzendowsky (Beyond the Blue Border), Laeni Geiseler (What Marielle Knows), and Face to Face with German Films ambassador Lea Drinda, Sound of Falling offers a devastating meditation on womanhood across a century.

“Cinema is too small a word for what this sprawling yet intimate epic achieves in its ethereal, unnerving brilliance; forget Cannes, forget the Competition, forget the whole year, even—Sound of Falling is an all-timer.” —Damon Wise, Deadline, 5/14/2025

The film screens at the Toronto, New York, Chicago, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Mill Valley, Hamptons, and Denver Film Festivals, as well as at AFI Fest.

In die Sonne schauen
Dir. Mascha Schilinski
Germany, 2025
149 min.
With Lena Urzendowsky, Hanna Heckt, Susanne Wuest, Luise Heyer, Laeni Geiseler, Lea Drinda, Florian Geisselmann, Gode Benedix

Christian Petzold, Miroirs No. 3

The latest by celebrated German director Christian Petzold (Phoenix, Barbara) renews his penchant for mysterious encounters. When pianist Laura survives a brutal car accident that kills her boyfriend, she finds herself in the care of Betty, who lives alone in a quiet house in the countryside. The reappearance of Betty’s estranged husband and son draws the four into an ersatz family, whose pleasurable routines and intimacies reveal a more complicated psychic terrain below them. In his fourth collaboration with actress Paula Beer (Undine), Petzold explores identity and grief through his signature, suggestive style.

“[An] exercise in economy, pared back to the barest of bones. Although it’s a wisp of a thing, it delivers rich rewards.” —Wendy Ide, Screen Daily, 5/17/2025

The film screens at the Toronto, New York, Chicago, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Montclair, and Hamptons Film Festivals, as well as AFI Fest and FilmColumbia.

Miroirs No. 3
Dir. Christian Petzold
Germany, 2025
86 min.
With Paula Beer, Barbara Auer, Matthias Brandt, Enno Trebs

Alexandre Koberidze, Dry Leaf

Shot on a mid-2000s Sony Ericsson phone, Koberidze’s third feature joins an unexpected visual style with a tempered meditation on vision and belonging in the mountainous Georgian countryside. When Irakli (played by Koberdize’s own father) learns that his adult daughter has disappeared while on a photography assignment to capture the country’s soccer fields, he and his invisible companion Levan set off on a road trip to hunt for traces of her. Encountering sleepy villages, bands of soccer-mad kids, and herds of gentle farm animals, the two slip in and out of their mission as the scenery rolls by. With a plucky score by the filmmaker’s brother Giorgi Koberidze, Dry Leaf reveals the pleasures of slowness and the materiality of nostalgia.

“Dry Leaf functions principally as an adventure in perception—an invitation to look, and look again.” —Lawrence Garcia, Reverse Shot, 9/30/2025

The film screens at the Toronto, New York, and Chicago Film Festivals.

ხმელი ფოთოლი
Dir. Alexandre Koberidze
Germany/Georgia, 2025
186 min.
With David Koberidze, Otar Nijaradze, Irina Chelidze, Giorgi Bochorishvili, Vakhtang Fanchulidze

Fatih Akın, Amrum

Directed by one of Germany’s most uncompromising filmmakers and written by his mentor Hark Bohm, Amrum tells the story of Nanning, a 12-year-old boy living on the titular island in the waning days of World War II. Despite the dangers of the nearby sea—and even greater dangers across it—Nanning helps his mother feed the family by working on the farm of his Nazi-hating neighbor. This hard but patient life is interrupted by Germany’s surrender, which reveals political tensions long simmering underneath the family. A challenging and textured morality tale based on Bohm’s own upbringing in Amrum, Akın poses a coming-of-age story at the knife’s edge of family loyalty and personal conviction.

“There are no grand moments, enormous revelations or manipulatively overpowering scores in his delicately constructed and produced film—it is as narratively straightforward as movies come. Though this timeless keeper is anything but toothless; very much like Nanning’s journey, Amrum itself is rooted in a shattering act of generosity.” —Tomris Laffly, Variety, 5/16/2025

The film screens at the Hamptons International Film Festival, AFI Fest, FilmColumbia, and the Denver Film Festival.

Amrum
Dir. Fatih Akın
Germany, 2025
93 min.
With Diane Kruger, Laura Tonke, Jasper Billerbeck, Detlev Buck, Lisa Hagmeister, Matthias Schweighöfer

Ido Fluk, KÖLN 75

Keith Jarrett’s 1975 The Köln Concert is the best-selling piano album in history—and it was almost never made. Fifty years later, Ido Fluk’s latest film tells its true story. Mala Emde stars as the indomitable and entrepreneurial Vera Brandes, an 18-year-old trying to strike a career as a concert promoter. When she hatches the idea of bringing the famous jazz pianist (played intensely by John Magaro) to her hometown of Cologne, she and her group of young music connoisseurs push the limits of multitasking to book the legendary Opera House, sell tickets, and convince Jarrett that the show must go on when his promised Imperial Grand Piano never arrives. Against all odds, the result is a now-renowned slice of music history.

KÖLN 75 is an enjoyably off-beat blend of biopic, historical pageant and music-geek lecture… celebrating not just the power of music but also the giddy idealism of youth.” —Stephen Dalton, The Film Verdict, 2/15/2025

The film screens as the closing gala presentation at the Vancouver International Film Festival—featuring a live performance of music inspired by the film by Chris Gestrin—as well as at the Newport Beach and Hamptons Film Festivals and FilmColumbia. Can’t make it to the festivals? KÖLN 75 opens in US theaters on October 17th through Zeitgeist Films.

KÖLN 75
Dir. Ido Fluk
Germany/Poland/Belgium, 2025
110 min.
With Mala Emde, John Magaro, Michael Chernus, Alexander Scheer