Berlinale Talents 2026: Creating (and) Confusion - Cinema, Chaos and the Power of Discomfort.
Berlinale Talents announces New Location and Key Visual for the 2026 theme “Creating (and) Confusion - Cinema, Chaos and the Power of Discomfort.”
In 2026, Berlinale Talents embraces ambiguity and paradox as vital elements of our world, celebrating the courage to resist easy answers, under the theme “Creating (and) Confusion – Cinema, Chaos and the Power of Discomfort.”
Personal insights, the new and exciting, don’t emerge when everything is clear. It happens in the midst of not knowing. Clarity and creativity arise from exploration — from the tension and discomfort of confusion that pushes us to seek, imagine, and transform.
In cinema, confusion mirrors life’s complexity through fragmented memories, contradictions, and emotions that resist simple narratives. Filmmakers deliberately craft surprise and suspense through editing, rhythm, sound, and structure, creating meaningful ambiguity. Paradoxically, this requires precision: framing, pacing, and scripting all shape the cinematic experience.
A good story refuses a simple truth. It offers multiple angles, activating audiences to reflect and interpret. Sometimes the caused sensation of confusion stems from unfamiliarity — language, references, cultural logic — revealing our own limitations. In postcolonial, diasporic, indigenous and queer storytelling, confusion embodies the lived realities of identity, displacement, trauma, and broken histories. Here, it challenges dominant narratives and demands new forms.
Berlinale Talents management duo, Nikola Joetze and Tobias Pausinger share their enthusiasm for the next edition, “Last year’s journey into the art of listening revealed a truth we cannot ignore: our world resounds with noise, a chorus of clashing voices, opinions, and messages that can at times overwhelm. It feels only natural, then, to carry that exploration forward into the realm of confusion. For Berlinale Talents 2026, we choose to embrace this state not with apprehension, but with optimism and creativity. What emerges when we set aside preconceptions, question the things we think we know, strip things back to basics and begin anew? This is exactly why we invite 200 diverse Talents from all over the world to Berlin to question and explore together, opening a beautiful space for experimenting, failing and unlearning.”
The Key Visual
Designing the key visual to stand alongside the theme is Berlin-based graphic design duo Ada Favaron and Imad Gebrael. Their visual explores the fragmented, chaotic nature of perception and the continuous flow of the creative process. Abstract shapes hint at human elements such as eyes, hands, and mouths without fully defining them, echoing filmmaking’s ambiguous, behind-the-scenes world where ideas are not yet judged, subversion is encouraged, and collective understanding grows through exploration. The visual celebrates disorder and invites curiosity, showing how cinema and creativity can turn confusion into insight.
New Venue
The next edition of Berlinale Talents will not only have an exciting new theme and key visual, but a new venue too. Starting in 2026, Berlinale Talents will take place in Berlin’s Radialsystem. As a space dedicated to the arts and collaboration, the impeccably renovated former pumping station on the banks of the River Spree is a fitting home for the interdisciplinary, international talent development programme of the Berlin International Film Festival.
Of the new venue Joetze & Pausinger said “In 2026, we embark on a fresh chapter with a change of location to Radialsystem. For the first time, our entire programme will unfold under one roof - a true House of Talent - where together we can step boldly into the chaos of confusion and discover what it has to teach us.”
Matthias Mohr, Artistic Director and Managing Director of Radialsystem, welcomes the move “We are delighted to welcome Berlinale Talents to Radialsystem for the first time. The intensive exchange between filmmakers from many different areas of film production breaks down genre boundaries and opens up new perspectives. This transdisciplinary approach is programmatic for Radialsystem: situated in the heart of Berlin's historical and cultural landscape, the venue is a space for artistic and collaborative activity and has been bringing geographical, social and aesthetic distances into dialogue for almost twenty years.”
Berlinale Talents, the vibrant talent hub of the Berlin International Film Festival, will take place between February 13–18, 2026 at Radialsystem in Berlin. One of the most important forums for up-and-coming filmmakers, each year 200 emerging filmmakers and series creators are invited for a week of workshops, think-tanks, discussions, networking opportunities and more. Celebrating collaboration across its more than 15 film disciplines, Berlinale Talents emphasises equality in the creative process and fosters a diverse, fair cultural sector worldwide. Public events also invite Berlin’s audiences to come face-to-face with leading industry figures, with guests in recent years including Todd Haynes, Lupita Nyong’o, Martin Scorsese, Kristen Stewart, Tilda Swinton and Bong Joon-ho and many more.
Read the Berlinale press release here.
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.