Berlinale Talents Announces New Location and Key Visual for the 2026 Theme “Creating (and) Confusion — Cinema, Chaos and the Power of Discomfort” 

Now in its 24th edition, Berlinale Talents is Berlin International Film Festival’s acclaimed talent development programme which brings together 200 emerging filmmakers and film professionals for an intensive development programme at the heart of the festival.

Each year the Talents programme is devised around a key theme, often a provocation and a jumping off point to stimulate dialogue and deeper examination of the creative process. This year Berlinale Talents embraces the ambiguity and complexity of our world and shines a spotlight on the creative potential that can emerge out of embracing this reality with the theme “Creating (and) Confusion – Cinema, Chaos and the Power of Discomfort”. 

Over the five days of the programme filmmakers will explore how creative ideas and personal insights rarely arise from apparently clear and simple situations, but rather from open and complex conditions, encounters and questions.

Berlinale Talents programme management duo Tobias Pausinger and Nikola Joetze elaborates: “The discomfort of confusion often leads to an inner search for answers and it can drive creative thinking. In cinema, filmmakers create tension and ambiguity through editing, rhythm, and sound. Paradoxically, this very confusion requires precise decisions in framing, tempo, and form. A good story, a good film, widens perspectives and provokes thought and is most satisfying when it shows us something new about the world. We so look forward to inviting 200 Talents from all over the world to Berlin – to engage with and explore these ideas together, and to create a space for experimentation, failure, and new beginnings.”

More on the curatorial concept

The key visual for the annual theme, designed by Berlin-based duo Ada Favaron and Imad Gebrael, explores the fragmented, chaotic nature of perception and the continuous flow of the creative process. Abstract forms suggest eyes, hands, and mouths without fully defining them. In this way, they reflect the ambiguous world behind the scenes of filmmaking, where ideas circulate freely and collective understanding emerges from shared exploration. 

In 2026, Berlinale Talents will take place at Berlin’s Radialsystem. As a space for art and creative collaboration, the former pumping station on the banks of the Spree is an ideal venue for the interdisciplinary and international talent development programme of the Berlin International Film Festival – and the perfect place to bring together emerging filmmakers and major stars of the festival on a more personal level. 

Nikola Joetze and Tobias Pausinger comment: “In 2026, with the move to Radialsystem, we will open a new chapter. For the first time, our entire programme will take place under one roof – a true House of Talents, whose architecture fosters constant networking among our participants.” 

Matthias Mohr, artistic director and managing director of Radialsystem, adds: “We are very pleased to welcome Berlinale Talents to Radialsystem for the first time. The intensive exchange between filmmakers from many different areas of film production makes genre boundaries permeable and opens up new perspectives. This transdisciplinary approach is central to Radialsystem’s programme.”

Berlinale Talents, the talent development initiative of the Berlin International Film Festival, will take place from February 13 to 18, 2026 at Radialsystem, Holzmarktstr. 33, Berlin. As one of the most important forums for emerging filmmakers, 200 participants are invited each year to a week of workshops, think tanks, discussions, networking opportunities, and much more. Public events invite Berlin audiences to meet leading industry figures in person — past Berlinale guests have included Todd Haynes, Lupita Nyong’o, Martin Scorsese, Kristen Stewart, Tilda Swinton, Bong Joon-ho, and many more. 

More information on Berlinale Talents

Berlinale Talents is part of Berlinale Pro, which unites the European Film Market, the Berlinale Co-Production Market, Berlinale Talents and the World Cinema Fund. Berlinale Pro is the festival’s full-circle industry infrastructure that serves the global film industry as incubator, enhancer and supporter in all stages of film development, production, sales and distribution.

Berlinale Talents is supported by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, Creative Europe - MEDIA Programme of the European Union, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, German Federal Film Board, Mastercard and CUPRA