About the Festival
INTERFILM Festival
4 - 9 November 2025
4 - 9 November 2025
About the Festival
With 21,000 visitors and 400 international guests attending over 60 programs and events, INTERFILM 41 and KUKI 18 came to a successful close. A team of 34 curators collaboratively assembled the program of 350 films shown across more than a dozen venues. Five competitions awarded prizes worth a total of €35,000. — Here all award sponsors and winners can be found here and here are some festival impressions.
The festival was shaped by its thematic focus Weaving Tomorrows: exploring strategies for a liveable future between tradition, norms, and community, especially in light of current global events. These perspectives defined not only the focus presentations and InterForum discussions but also the festival as a whole. Themes of environment, values, futurism, psychology, and politics ran throughout all events.
After the festival is before the festival: given the state of the world, new orientations and priorities will surely emerge soon as we prepare the next edition. Along this path, it is encouraging that the current edition managed to strengthen our spirits and showed that cinema and the screen remain vital places of connection in the present moment.
In an era in which democracy is put to the test on a daily basis, in which liberty and freedom of expression are under pressure everywhere we look, film is more than entertainment – it becomes a lever, an assembly, a strategy. With the 41st edition of INTERFILM, we call, amidst all the chaos, crises and constructed narratives, for the creation of spaces in which solidarity sustains, resistance grows, memories remain alive and utopias germinate.
As always, INTERFILM not only asks what we see, but instead – to a greater degree – how we can act. Where are spaces being created for solidarity, resistance, memory and utopia? How can we preserve stories that would otherwise be drowned out by the noise of crises? And how can we manage to hold each other up, instead of breaking each other down?
Our programs tell of those that push on in spite of dark times, reach out a helping or conciliatory hand, laugh, cry, quarrel – and become stronger together. A solar eclipse doesn't have to be the end. We take this darkness as our starting signal, to weave together what defines us: stories, community – and perhaps a touch of madness to carry us through the week. Film is not only art, it is also a stance. In this spirit: open those hearts and eyes – and off we go.
Founded in 1982 in the squats of Kreuzberg, INTERFILM is the oldest and largest short film festival in the capital that attracts international filmmakers and local film fans alike to the cinemas every year. The festival, which qualifies for the Academy Awards, has long been renowned beyond German and European borders.
INTERFILM and its sister festival KUKI - the young short film festival Berlin show more than 350 short films every year in more than 50 programmes, workshops and events. Both festivals see themselves as audience festivals with a focus on narrative film. Both festivals have set themselves the goal of curately reflecting current political and social events and creating a space for strong films with progressive content. Representation, reflection and empowerment are at the centre of programmes that deal with themes of post-colonial heritage, social participation, global injustice, sexual and gender self-determination and anti-capitalist positions. In short: INTERFILM & KUKI focus on the central potential of short film, its ability to reflect the red-hot zeitgeist. The selected short films and the colourful, loud, loving audience show that this does not have to mean dreary discourse events under the aegis of old white men.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank Heinz Hermanns once again for his invaluable work, which over four decades has made INTERFILM what it is today: a celebration of short film with an international reputation, strong roots and confidence in the future.
Since 2020 the artistic direction of the festival has been taken over by a festival curatorium. A step that firmly anchors the diversity and polyphony of the short film medium in the artistic orientation and curatorial practice of the festival, and a concept that should also take the multifaceted nature of short film into account in the organisational structure of the festival. Living up to this claim is not always easy, but discussion is productive and monoculture is never sustainable. The signs of the times are complex and this must also be reflected in the way we work.
The Festival Curatorium is formed by Alexander Stein, Andrea Schwemmer, Cord Dueppe, Fredi Klutas, Matthias Groll, Monica Koshka-Stein, Moritz Lehr and Sarah Dombrink - see below.
In the context of the current global situation, which is characterized by a multitude of wars, conflicts, flight, radicalization and a discernible social and political shift to the right, grief and trauma, and in particular the war on Gaza, the task of cultural spaces as places of negotiation for the democratic exchange of opinions becomes particularly relevant. We stand for open discourse and democratic values.
We sympathize with all those affected by the catastrophic situation in the Middle East as well as all victims of violence, discrimination and oppression worldwide. We believe in film as a means of expression and understanding. We are convinced that authentic, personal and artistic representation of the realities of life through film, far removed from defamation, discrimination and one-dimensionality, can make a lasting contribution to global progressive discourse.
Interfilm strives and aims to remain a protected space. This is an active, participatory process in which dissent should be possible, on the basis of a respectful treatment of other individual experiences, positions and subjective experiences in order to enable an equitable exchange.
Films and filmmakers, guests and other participants from all backgrounds are welcome and discrimination in any form has no place here. This includes, but is not limited to: Racism, sexism, misogyny, queer-, homo- and trans-hostility, xenophobia, anti-Semitism*, Islamophobia, ableism, classism and other prejudicial ideologies, attitudes and practices.
We continue to invite Palestinian as well as Israeli filmmakers to submit and present their work to us and to see our festival as an open space of encounter and exchange through film. We reject politically motivated influences on our program, “background checks” and obligatory ideological self-declarations. We respect the decision of all film, culture and art professionals who do not want to cooperate with German institutions out of solidarity with the Palestinian people, and hope that cooperation will be possible again in the future.
We are aware that wholly discrimination-free spaces do not exist and that our own work, including the work we do on ourselves, is not limited to declarations of intent. This text is a tool in an ongoing process, not a final result of our engagement with ourselves as an institution or with this topic.
*In the current political discourse, the term anti-Semitism is subject to a complex field of tension. The definition that is decisive for us is this one: *jerusalemdeclaration.org
studied film, theater, ethnology and journalism in Berlin. After his studies he learned film animation at Kaskeline Filmproduktion and realized his own animated films as well as stage designs and projections for the Schaubühne Berlin, Schauspielhaus Hamburg and for the world exhibition spectacle "Flambee" in Hannover 2000. He joined interfilm in 1998 and took over the role of producer.
Viewing and Co-Curation: Reality Bites & Eject
studied theater, film studies and acting in Berlin and New York and has appeared on stage, TV and film. She co-curates the IC, plays in the swing band The Toolbox Orchestra, works as a presenter and programs at the Max Ophüls Preis and the Arab Film Festival San Francisco.
Viweing and Co-Curation: International Competition
studied film studies and has been part of the interfilm team since 2016, where he does the international distribution of our short films and also co-curates the International Competition.
is an ultra-long-term student of German philology and something with culture. She has been a permanent part of the KUKI team since 2018, where she organizes, screens, curates, feeds social media, bakes cakes, and co-curates Teenage Riot. And because she likes all weird things, she is also co-curator of eject.
Viewing und Co-Curation KUKI
has been an interfilmer for over 20 years. He studied sociology and journalism, enjoys writing book reviews, published the book "Das Digital" in 1998 and recently published "When Shiva rages, the world shakes - Hinduism as an adventure in everyday life in India". He has been curating at interfilm since the beginning, he looks after the website, organizes the monthly, nationwide short film programme series Shorts Attack and loves gardening.
Viewing und Co-Curation: Green Film Competition
was born in Australia to Chinese-Russian and German immigrants and settled in Berlin in her early twenties in 1993. She has always been involved in music, film, performance and art and has worked at interfilm Berlin since 1998. Monica became Artistic Director of KUKI Young Short Film Festival in 2011, leads KUKI’s film-curation workshops for teenagers, gives talks and curates short film programs for festivals and institutes around the world. In 2021, she joined the short film selection committee at Berlinale-Generation and developed the digital film education platform, Kurzfilm im Klassenraum that was launched in 2022. Her focus lies on the inventive and empathetic potential of the cinematic short form and how film can help young people feel at home in the world and in themselves. For the adult side of interfilm, she researches films and co-curates the genre programs and Teenage Riot.
Viewing KUKI and Co-Curation KUKI
co-curates documentaries, mockumentaries, music videos and everything in between. He has made short films and music videos, but actually comes more from music and is active as a Dj. He studied art, music and media, where he first came into contact with short films: love at first sight.
Viewing and Co-Curation: Documentaryfilmcompetition & Reality Bites
is acquisition manager for interfilm Berlin's Short Film Sales & Distribution since 2018. Before that, she worked for the interfilm festival in variety of positions starting as location manager in 2011. In between, she graduated in Media Studies at the Film University Babelsberg. She co-curates the German competition and is a member of the Festival Curatorium, the artistic directorial team.
Viewing and Co-Curation: German Competition
