Narciso by Marcelo Martinessi
The Berlin International Film Festival has unveiled the complete lineup for its 76th edition, running from February 12 to 22, 2026, including several Latin American films and works by Latin American filmmakers premiering across the festival’s different sections.
Three Latin American directors will compete for the Golden Bear in the Berlinale’s main competition. Mexican filmmaker Fernando Eimbcke returns to the Berlinale with Moscas, starring Teresita Sánchez, Bastian Escobar, Hugo Ramírez, and Enrique Arreola. Set in Mexico City, the film follows Olga, who rents out a room to a man whose wife is hospitalized nearby. When she discovers that he has been secretly bringing his nine-year-old son into the room, Olga’s carefully controlled life begins to unravel as their worlds quietly intertwine.
Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz also premieres his latest English-language feature, Rosebush Pruning, in the main competition. Starring Callum Turner, Riley Keough, Jamie Bell, Elle Fanning, and Pamela Anderson, the film is set in a Spanish villa and follows American siblings Jack, Ed, Anna, and Robert, who live in isolation amid their inherited fortune. When Jack wants to move in with his girlfriend and Ed uncovers the truth about their mother’s death, the fragile fabric of the family begins to unravel.
Also competing for the Golden Bear is Josephine, the second feature by Brazilian-American director Beth de Araújo, which will have its international premiere at the Berlinale following its recent world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. After eight-year-old Josephine accidentally witnesses a crime in Golden Gate Park, she begins to act out violently in an effort to protect herself, leading to growing tensions between her parents as they search for justice and a way to feel safe again. The film stars Channing Tatum, Gemma Chan, Mason Reeves, Phillip Ettinger, and Syra McCarthy.
The Perspectives Competition, dedicated to debut features, includes several world premieres from Latin American filmmakers. Argentine directors Lorenzo Ferro and Lucas A. Vignale present The River Train / El tren fluvial, about nine-year-old Milo, who lives in a remote Argentine village where he studies the Malambo, a folk dance marked by bravura. Though he excels as a dancer, Milo dreams of leaving the countryside behind and escaping by train to the Buenos Aires of his imagination.
Juan Pablo Sallato’s Hangar Rojo is set during the 1973 military coup in Chile. As the coup unfolds, Air Force Captain Jorge Silva is torn between duty and conscience when his academy is transformed into a detention center. Brazilian filmmaker Grace Passô makes her feature debut with Nosso Segredo. The film follows a family drifting through their home in silence after a recent loss, each member mourning alone until the youngest child reveals a secret that allows them to confront their grief together with love and courage.
In the Berlinale Special Presentation section, the latest work by acclaimed Chilean director Maite Alberdi, A Child of My Own / Un hijo propio, will have its world premiere. Starring Ana Celeste, Armando Espitia, Ángeles Cruz, Mayra Sérbulo Cortés, and Luisa Guzmán, the Mexican production is presented in documentary form and centers on Alejandra, whose profound desire to become a mother and pressure from her surroundings lead her to fake a pregnancy. What begins as a simple lie escalates into a complex charade and a media scandal that makes it impossible for her to maintain the deception.
The Panorama section features four Latin American world premieres. The Garden We Dreamed / El jardín que soñamos, directed by Joaquín del Paso, follows a family living in a land not their own, carving out a fragile space of tenderness amid a dwindling forest. The Mexican production stars Nehemie Bastien, Faustin Pierre, Kimaëlle Holly Preville, Ruth Aicha Pierre Nelson, and Carlos Esquivel.
In Isabel, a Brazilian coproduction directed by Gabe Klinger, a sommelier in São Paulo dreams of escaping her boss and opening her own bar. When her plans unravel, she must decide whether to stop everything or take bold steps to shape her future on her own terms. Marcelo Martinessi’s Narciso is set in Paraguay in 1958. Returning from Buenos Aires with rock ’n’ roll in his veins, the charismatic Narciso rises as a music sensation and a symbol of freedom under a suffocating military regime—until he is found dead after his final show.
Brazilian director André Novais Oliveira’s If I Were Alive / Se Eu Fosse Vivo… Vivia will also have its world premiere in Panorama. A story of a couple who promised to grow old together, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health—until death do them part.
Five films by Latin American filmmakers will have their world premiere in the non-competitive Forum section of the festival. Starring his regular cast of Teresita Sánchez, Luisa Pardo, Lázaro G. Rodríguez, and Francisco Barreiro, alongside Rosa Estela Juárez Vargas, the latest film by Mexican director Nicolás Pereda, Everything Else Is Noise / Todo lo demás es ruido, follows Tere as she opens her home to Rosa, a fellow musician-composer, for a TV interview. Conversations meander, new voices drift in, and an absurdist, comical chamber piece emerges that skewers art-world hypocrisy, mocks pretension, and celebrates a singular womanly bond.
Forest Up in the Mountain / Bosque arriba en la montaña, the documentary feature by Argentine filmmaker Sofía Bordenave, follows the case of young Mapuche Rafael Nahuel, who was killed by police in the Patagonian forest in 2017. Through site visits and court proceedings, the film meticulously observes the struggle for civil rights and the complex process of narrating history.
The Brazilian feature I Built a Rocket Imagining Your Arrival by Janaína Marques, featuring Verônica Cavalcanti, Luciana Souza, Fabíola Líper, Christiane de Lavor, and Ridson Reis, follows fifty-something Rosa as she lies in an MRI scanner, prompted to summon a happy memory. She plunges into a meandering, subconscious road trip with her bubbly mother, where wild imagination becomes a tender, unruly form of therapy.
The Moths & the Flame by Colombian-American director Kevin Contento—starring Jean Voltaire, Malik Hall, Wiltavious McKelton, Tavion Jamal Dent, and Helen Contento—traces life in Pahokee, Florida, where the myth of the absent Black father is contradicted daily: housework, children’s birthdays, neighborhood care. In calm, attentive vignettes brimming with solidarity, Contento illuminates his protagonists’ resilience and self-confidence.
The Colombian film Gemstones / Piedras preciosas by Simón Vélez, with Juan Lugo, Laura Taurines, Sofía Jaramillo, Yira Plaza, and Daniel Cortés, follows Machado, who is harvesting grapes in France when he is asked to carry out a tricky mission: to steal an emerald back home in Colombia. A tale full of swindles, the film swings elegantly between bourgeois greed and the rigors of doing what needs to be done.
The Generation section includes several Latin American titles across its Kplus and 14plus competitions. The Generation Kplus program opens with Eliza Capai’s documentary The Fabulous Time Machine / A Fabulosa Máquina do Tempo, which follows girls in the arid Brazilian hinterland as they stand between their mothers’ difficult pasts and their own dreams for the future, crossing the threshold from childhood into adolescence.
In Generation 14plus, Sad Girlz / Chicas tristes, the debut feature by Fernanda Tovar, centers on two inseparable friends and competitive swimmers whose bond is tested after an incident at a party forces them to choose between silence and speaking out.
In Matapanki, the debut feature by Chilean director Diego “Mapache” Fuentes, a young punk from the outskirts gains alcohol-fueled superpowers and sets out to change society. After one brutal mistake, he finds himself at the center of an international conflict. Dominican director Victoria Linares Villegas screens Don’t Come Out / No salgas, which follows Liz, who hides her true self after her girlfriend’s death. A weekend trip with friends awakens forbidden desires, leading to paranoia and violence that consume the group as her secret unleashes a deadly force.
The co-production from Brazil and the Netherlands and debut feature by Karen Suzane, Four Girls / Quatro Meninas, follows four enslaved girls who dream of freedom. When a turn of events puts their lives at risk, they decide to run away—only to be joined by their mistresses, who insist on going with them.
Three Latin American short films will also screen in Generation 14plus. Nobody Knows the World / Allá en el cielo by Roddy Dextre follows eleven-year-old Chito, who cares for carrier pigeons used in his brother’s drug trade on the outskirts of Lima, as grief and a fragile act of humanity open the possibility of another destiny. Edgar Adrián’s short film When I Get Home / Cuando llegue a casa explores a teenager’s search for identity as he prepares for a religious feast with his grandmother. Colombian filmmaker Luzbeidy Monterrosa Atencio presents The Dream of Dancing / Jülapüin Yonna, in which 15-year-old Weinshi, a girl from the Wayuu people whose name means “Time,” begins to hear an ancestral calling in her dreams, urging her people to heal the earth through the sacred dance of the Yonna.
In Berlinale Shorts, Argentine director Renzo Cozza presents Time to Go / La hora de irse, which follows Patricio, who works for his sisters and feels trapped in a life that no longer fits him, agreeing to go on a date with a mysterious man in search of change. Mexican filmmaker Karla Condado screens Miriam, a documentary short framed as a film letter to the director’s aunt, who was murdered by her partner, addressing grief, fear, and the difficult process of breaking silence to create space for healing.
The Forum Expanded section presents additional short films by Latin American filmmakers that examine how histories are written, contested, and remembered, foregrounding personal perspectives amid political uncertainty and ongoing conflict.
Colombian filmmaker Diana Bustamante presents El león, a documentary short in which strange images overlap, making a dead body, a singer, and an audience appear like floating ghosts. Paradoxically and theatrically, the film reveals how death inhabits Bogotá’s León de Greiff Auditorium.
Also screening is Filme Pin, directed by María Rojas Arias and Andrés Jurado (La Vulcanizadora) and featuring Ana Naomi de Sousa. This Colombia–Portugal documentary short traces a collection of solidarity pins that becomes an archive of exile and international struggle against Portugal’s fascist and colonial regime.
From Brazil, Felipe M. Bragança and Denilson Baniwa present Floresta do fim do mundo. The short follows Suely, an Indigenous woman living in a large Brazilian city, who spends her days confined to a small apartment while, in her dreams, she communicates with a forest and uncovers the secrets of a world undergoing radical change.
