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The Berlin Film Festival kicked off its 75th anniversary edition February 13 with the opening-night world premiere screening of The Light, Tom Tykwer’s politically charged film that takes stock of German society in the first quarter of the 21st century. It starts 11 days of debuts including for movies starring Jessica Chastain, Ethan Hawke, Margaret Qualley, Rupert Friend, Marion Cotillard, Rose Byrne, A$AP Rocky, Emma Mackey and more.

The 2025 Berlinale runs through February 23.

Keep checking back below as Deadline reviews the best and buzziest movies of the festival. Click on the titles to read the full reviews.

Blue Moon

Section: Competition

Director: Richard Linklater

Cast: Ethan Hawke, Margaret Qualley, Bobby Cannavale, Andrew Scott

Deadline’s takeaway: Richard Linklater’s Broadway chamber piece looks back to a lost time and mourns a lost soul in Lorenz Hart as the booze is about to consume him. In a bravura theatrical performance, Ethan Hawke...

There’s an apt bluntness to the English-language title of Petra Volpe’s new feature. It says what’s necessary and gets the job done, not unlike the nurse at the center of Late Shift. It’s worth noting, though, that the Swiss-German film’s original title, Heldin, though similarly to-the-point, forgoes the just-the-facts modesty and cops to something that fuels the movie no less than the nuts and bolts of 21st century medical care: awed admiration. It means “heroine,” and there’s no question that Floria Lind, the devoted pro played with prodigious fluency by Leonie Benesch in this tense and immersing workplace drama, is as valiant as the most epically challenged protagonist in an action saga.

Volpe (The Divine Order) and her lead actor move through the hospital with a go-go-go energy that’s thoroughly gripping, never forced. Even before her shift begins, Floria’s engaged but terse...

An elderly woman dies, and her three adult sons cling to each other, weeping, before turning on the duty nurse. She hadn’t seen their mother once, they blurt to the doctor. It wouldn’t have made any difference; there is nothing Nurse Floria (Leonie Benesch) could have done to prevent a pulmonary embolism. But the nurse flinches. It’s true. There are just two of them on the late shift and a full ward of 26 patients: Even in Switzerland, which has arguably the best health service in the world, there are serious staff shortages. The dead woman was designated last on her round. Floria failed her.

Petra Volpe’s busy, urgent cancer-ward procedural is exactly what it says it is: a shift in the life of a nurse, a pile of incidents encountered at speed. Judith Kaufmann’s camera races behind and around Floria, looking intermittently rough: what doesn...

A fully occupied surgical ward staffed only by two nurses and a reluctant apprentice sounds like a recipe for disaster. “Late Shift”, a slight and simple drama about one nurse’s torrid night at the hospital, makes that clear, if it wasn’t obvious enough already. A fairly transparent attempt to show how tough life is for nurses even in clean, well-kept, highly advanced facilities, “Late Shift” even ends with cards of information about the shortage of nurses afflicting all four corners of the globe, and how it’s getting worse. But noble intentions aside, writer-director Petra Volpe’s film is ultimately too much think, not enough feel.

Leonie Benesch plays Floria, a worn out public servant (emphasis on servant) trying to coexist with chaos and finding those around her wanting. That much is similar to her breakout role in “The Teachers’ Lounge”, 2023’s Turkish-German classroom drama about a teacher...

Following last week’s lineup announcement, the Berlinale 2025 has now fleshed out its slate with the Competition, Special, and Perspectives sections. Highlights include the world premieres of Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon starring Ethan Hawke, Margaret Qualley, Bobby Cannavale, and Andrew Scott; Radu Jude’s Kontinental ’25; Hong Sangsoo’s What Does that Nature Say to You; Michel Franco’s Dreams starring Jessica Chastain; Lucile Hadžihalilović’s The Ice Tower starring Marion Cotillard; and Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s Hot Milk with Emma Mackey, Fiona Shaw, and Vicky Krieps.

The festival will also include international premieres from Julia Loktev, Mary Bronstein, Kahlil Joseph, and more. In terms of omissions for films that potentially could have been a strong fit: there’s no Steven Soderberg’s Black Bag, Wes Anderson’s German production The Phoenician Scheme, nor Berlinale regular Christian Petzold, who wrapped Miroirs No. 3 only a few months ago.

Check out the lineup...