Berlinale Spotlight: Panorama, Generation, Forum at the Documentation Centre for Displacement, Expulsion, Reconciliation

For many years, the Berlinale has been presenting specially curated programmes outside the festival time. These programmes go by the name Berlinale Spotlight.

Following the highly successful Berlinale Spotlight events of recent years, a new programme will take place at the Documentation Centre for Displacement, Expulsion, Reconciliation in Berlin from November 18 to December 16, 2026. Berlinale Spotlight: Panorama, Generation, Forum presents works by some of the most renowned documentary filmmakers of our time.

In February 2027, the Documentation Centre will once again serve as a venue for the European Film Market.

The films selected for the Berlinale Spotlight address fundamental questions of war, displacement, migration, and belonging. Their perspectives range from confronting political violence and reflecting on historical and contemporary conflicts to exploring the everyday realities of refugee children. Together, they offer a multifaceted view of displacement, memory and resilience, making the human dimension of social and geopolitical upheaval tangible.

Panorama Dokumente will present The Other Side of The Sun by Tawfik Sabouni on November 18, 2026. The film has been submitted as Syria’s entry for the Oscars 2027 in the category “Best International Feature Film”.

On December 9, Forum will screen Chronos – Flow of Time, directed by Volker Koepp. Alongside Berlinale films from 2026, Generation will conclude the series on December 16 with WASTELAND — So that No One Becomes Aware of It, directed by Anne Kodura, originally released in 2013.

Admission to all Berlinale Spotlight events is free of charge. Tickets can be reserved in advance.

The Programme:

November 18, 2026, 6.30 pm
Panorama Dokumente: The Other Side of The Sun
Belgium / France / Saudi Arabia, 2026 Directed by Tawfik Sabouni Written by Tawfik Sabouni and Laurine Estrade
Language: Arabic with English subtitles
Running time: 92 min A discussion with director Tawfik Sabouni will follow the screening.

Tickets

Years ago, filmmaker Tawfik Sabouni was released from Saidnaya, the infamous Syrian prison also known as “the other side of the sun”. In the immediate aftermath of the fall of Assad’s regime in December 2024, the filmmaker returns to the site of his detention. He does not intend to reopen wounds but instead restore what systematic violence tried to erase: voices, stories and humanity. Sabouni invites four fellow survivors of Saidnaya to join him. Together, they return to the physical spaces where they were

December 9, 2026, 6.00 pm
Forum: Chronos – Flow of Time
Germany, 2026 Directed and written by Volker Koepp
Languages: German, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Belarusian, Russian, Romanian with German subtitles
Running time: 200 min The screening will be followed by a discussion with director Volker Koepp, moderated by Barbara Wurm (Head of Forum).

Tickets

“Sarmatische Zeit” (Sarmatian Time) is the name of a poetry collection by Johannes Bobrowski, which becomes a personal, lyrical leitmotif for Volker Koepp in this visually striking, far-reaching exploration of the region between the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea, along the Memel, Dnister and Pruth rivers. It is a place of different origins, longings and crimes: a melting pot for myriad cultures and affiliations, a point of reference and refuge for over half a century in the work of the great chronicler and the setting of repeated cruelties and destruction. Returning to his own oeuvre with companions old and new becomes a simultaneous process of looking back and bringing things up to date. Like the arms of a delta, connections to German history and the entire European context are created, between past and present. And for a long while, time seems to stand terribly still within this flow, for since the start of the Russian war against Ukraine in 2022, the echo of the experience of violence inscribed into this region becomes impossible to ignore. What originates in poems about the Memel region develops into a monumental contemplation about people in time and space.

December 16, 2026, 6.30 pm
Generation: WASTELAND — So that No One Becomes Aware of It
Germany, 2013 Directed by Anne Kodura
Language: German
Running time: 79 min (Recommended for ages 9 and up)
The screening will be followed by a discussion with director Anne Kodura, moderated by Sebastian Markt (Co-Head of Generation).

Tickets

Muhammad, Mustafa and Aya are among a group of kids living far out on the site of a former barracks. Nobody else lives there anymore. There’s nothing but fields, sheep, wind turbines – and a lot of time. It takes imagination to find ways to pass it. Their families came here years ago to escape various war zones. They have lived in this asylum ever since. Sometimes a bus passes in the distance, reminding them of other people and other ways of life. The long summer holidays drag on. The kids wander through the tall grass, ride their bikes down to the lake or look for scrap copper to sell. Filmed in luminous black-and-white, filmmakers Anne Kodura and Friede Clausz focus their gaze entirely on the way the children see things, managing to get them to reveal in casual conversations their feelings about home and identity. Their parents never appear but are only heard describing their difficult situation in a few spare pieces of voice-over. In order to concentrate on the children’s attitude to life, there are no specifics given about their background, and no dramatisations. A compelling documentary that stays with you long after it has ended.

Venue
Documentation Centre for Displacement, Expulsion, Reconciliation Stresemannstraße 90 10963 Berlin S-Bahn station: Anhalter Bahnhof / near Potsdamer Platz

More information: www.f-v-v.de

Berlinale Spotlight: Panorama, Generation, Forum is a cooperation between the Documentation Centre for Displacement, Expulsion, Reconciliation and the Berlinale’s European Film Market (EFM).