The Berlin International Film Festival otherwise known as Berlinale kicked off on February 12th and will continue until the 22nd. One of Europe's most renowned festivals along with Cannes and Venice – collectively known as the "Big Three" – it has been an important event in showcasing Korean cinema to international audiences. As a public facing festival, it attracts a large audience with 336,000 tickets sold in 2025, while it also has a strong industry component with the European Film Market (EFM) running alongside it. More than 17,000 industry professionals were accredited in 2025 together with 2,429 media representatives. This year the market runs from February 12-18.

The festival has long supported Korean cinema. In 1961 Kang Dae-jin's The Coachman (1961) made history becoming the first Korean film to win a major award at a European festival bringing home the Silver Bear Extraordinary Jury Prize. Since then, it has frequently invited Korean films to its selection. In 1973, it invited Long Live the Island Frogs (1973) by Jung Jin-woo who passed away this week at the age of 88. In 1998 the festival screened a selection of titles that included a retrospective of Kim Ki-young featuring his seminal film The Housemaid (1960).

In the contemporary era it's invited an array of commercial and independent films with Park Chan-wook's JSA (2000) screening there in 2001. Yoon Ga-eun's feature debut The World of Us (2016) premiered at the festival in 2016 after her short film Sprout (2013) that won the Crystal Bear for short film. The festival has continued to invite new voices like Kim Dae-hwan whose End of Winter (2014) screened at the festival along with Kim Bora's The House of Hummingbird (2019). It too has screened the works from more established directors. Min Kyu-dong's The Old Woman with a Knife (2025) was part of the Special Programme in 2025 and Bong Joon Ho's Hollywood debut Mickey 17 (2025) made a stop in Berlin after its world premiere in London.

This year the festival has invited three Korean features along with a short film while Korean actor Bae Doona is serving on the jury headed by German filmmaker Wim Wenders. This week we profile to the films invited to this year's 76th Edition.

En Route To (Yoo Jaein) & Speedy! (Oh Jiin)

Premiering at the Busan International Film Festival, En Route To (2025) is the latest Busan title to secure an invitation to Berlinale. Both End of Winter and House of Hummingbird were Busan discoveries. Produced by the Korean Academy of Film Arts (KAFA) it also highlights the role it plays in training new talent.

House of Hummingbird (2019)

Directed by Yoo Jaein, it is her graduation project and one of the standout projects in Busan last year. The film centers on a student played by Sim Su-bin who attends a boarding school and attempts to have an abortion. She seeks to pay for the abortion pills with money her roommate (Lee Ji-won) has saved selling vape liquid cartridges. Meanwhile her teacher has gone missing as the film delves into teenage pregnancy and the difficulties they face when trying to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. It also deals with the stigmatization that young women face when abused by men in power. The film is screening in Generation 14plus.
World Sales: Hive Filmworks Inc. (sales@burzip.com)

Screening in Generation Kplus is another film by young filmmaker, Oh Jiin's short Speedy! that is set in Seoul in 1989. It follows a young girl who attends a popular reading institute following the insistence of her father and aunt. There she meets a ferocious reader who can finish a book in just a minute and is inspired by the training methods, but things don't go as initially planned.

Oh Jiin's debut short Say Something (2023) traveled widely and she completed her MA in directing and screenwriting at Columbia University in New York. Speedy! secured a grant from the US Film Production Company Indian Paintbrush.

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The Day She Returns (Hong Sangsoo)

The idiosyncratic auteur is such a frequent guest at Berlinale something might feel amiss if one of his titles wasn't included. The last time a film of his wasn't in the festival was back in 2018. He has won four awards since 2020, his most recent accolade was the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize for A Traveler's Needs (2024).

The Day She Returns (2026) is Hong Sangsoo's 34th feature film and will play in the festival's Panorama section. It follows a woman who gave up acting after getting married but following her divorce she takes up the profession again appearing as a lead in an independent feature film. She does three interviews to promote the film and her acting coach asks her to re-enact what she said but struggles to remember the important parts.

Shot in black and white, the title appears to have some connection to his film The Day He Arrives (2011) but as ever with Hong, it's likely to be with some variation. Both films star Song Sunmi.

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My Name (Chung Ji-young)

Having made his debut in 1980s, Chung Ji-young is unusual in the industry for finding success at the box office much later in his career with titles like Unbowed (2012) and Black Money (2022). He was an instrumental figure in the 1990s as films like his Vietnam war feature White Badge (1992) were tackling history differently compared to some of the earlier films when censorship prevented many directors taking more critical approaches.

At 79 years old, his new film My Name being invited to Berlin is a significant achievement as he remains a central figure in the industry. The film once again explores history and politics; this time it turns to the Jeju Uprising of 1948 when a mother (Yeom Hye-ran) of a boy living during the late 1990s is having to face a troubled and repressed past.

The film's lead Yeom Hye-ran is going from strength to strength featuring in the hit series The Glory (2022-2023) and When Life Gives you Tangerines (2025) as well as the box office hit Citizen of a Kind (2024), and more recently Park Chan-wook's No Other Choice (2025).

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Written by Jason Bechervaise
Edited by kofic