Berlinale Co-Production Market: Launchpad for 35 New International Feature Film Co-Productions

For the 23rd Berlinale Co-Production Market (February 14—17), 35 film projects from 27 countries have been selected. Their producers will meet with 600 potential co-producers, world sales agents, distributors, and other financiers at the event, which will primarily take place this year in the Atrium Tower at the Berlinale Service Center, right next to the Berlinale Palast. The goal: to realize the feature films as international co-productions. Women are directing 16 of the 35 projects. The 390 submissions for the official project selection represent a significant increase of 50 projects compared to the previous year.

Renowned international production companies and multiple award-winning directors are behind the selected, already partially financed projects, including Alonso Ruizpalacios, Aida Begic, Eduardo Casanova, Klaudia Reynicke, Signe Baumane, Deepak Rauniyar, Amanda Nell Eu, Fernando Guzzoni, Hao Wu and Leonie Krippendorff.

The Berlinale Directors section will be adding four new projects in the early stages of financing, whose directors are also well-known: Dénes Nagy won the Silver Bear for Best Director in 2021 with Natural Light. Rodrigo Moreno’s The Custodian was honoured in the 2006 Berlinale Competition. Laurynas Bareisa, recently awarded for his feature films in Venice and Locarno, presented his short film Dummy in the Berlinale Shorts Competition in 2020.

Two additional feature film projects — Beirut Baby by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige and The Dispute by Andrea Ellsworth and Kasey Elise Walker, produced by Riley Keough’s U.S. production company Felix Culpa — are looking for partners both at CineMart Rotterdam and the Berlinale Co-Production Market as part of the Rotterdam-Berlinale Express.

A project from Sudan will be presented in cooperation with the Berlinale World Cinema Fund: Blue Card by Mohammed Alomda. Currently structured as a co-production with Germany and supported by the WCF in 2025, the project is looking for additional partners to complete financing.

“Genre is strongly represented in our selection this year: horror, particularly body horror, provides a powerful and commercially interesting narrative form for several projects with relevant political and psychological themes. But participants will also find outstanding arthouse animation projects, dramas, thrillers, action films, and some comedies among the projects they can help finance and realise. Family models, gender-based violence, identity, and self-determination are some of the recurring themes this time,” says Martina Bleis, head of the Berlinale Co-Production Market.

In the Talent Project Market, organised in cooperation with Berlinale Talents, ten alumni producers will present their latest projects and seek international partners. Among them are new works by directors such as Álvaro Gago, who was featured in Berlinale Panorama in 2023 with Matria, and Simon Jaquemet, whose debut War started in the Talent Project Market in 2013. Award-winning Indonesian producer Yulia Evina Bhara will present a new project by Makbul Mubarak, who launched one of her first international features, Autobiography, at the Talent Project Market in 2019.

In addition to co-production and financing partners, attractive cash prizes await the new projects: The prestigious Eurimages Co-Production Development Award worth 20,000 euros, the VFF Talent Highlight Award worth 10,000 euros, for a Talent Project Market project; the ARTEKino International Award worth 6,000 euros, and the Gen Z Audience Award endowed with 5,000 euros, sponsored by the Franco-German Youth Office (DFJW/OFAJ), awarded by a jury of film students to a project that particularly appeals to young adults.

Five companies will be featured in the Company Matching programme, which focuses on structural networking and project slates: X Filme Creative Pool from Germany, Elastica from Spain, Kino Produzioni from Italy, 2Brave Productions from Ukraine and Bubbles Project from Brazil are participating this year.

Nearly 400 international co-productions have already been made from Berlinale Co-Production Market projects. Among the recent successes in the past year are Franz by Agnieszka Holland, nominated in several categories for the European Film Awards, and Mother by Teona Strugar Mitevska, starring Noomi Rapace.

For 2026, Iván & Hadoum by Ian de la Rosa has already been confirmed for the Berlinale — a film that received a significant boost from the 2023 Berlinale Co-Production Market, not least through winning the Eurimages Award.

Further information can be found on the Berlinale Co-Production Market website.

The Berlinale Co-Production Market is part of Berlinale Pro, which encompasses the European Film Market, Berlinale Co-Production Market, Berlinale Talents, and the World Cinema Fund. Berlinale Pro is the festival’s comprehensive industry infrastructure, serving as an incubator, promoter, and supporter of the global film industry in all phases of film development, production, as well as sales and distribution.

The Berlinale Co-Production Market is supported by MDM - Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung and the Creative Europe - MEDIA Programme of the European Union, as well as the FFA - German Federal Film Board.