German Film Festival unveils new program for 2025

The HSBC German Film Festival is set to return for 2025, featuring a standout selection of twenty German films, screening from Thursday, May 8, to Wednesday, May 28, at Luna Leederville, Luna on SX and Palace Raine Square. 

Presented by Palace in collaboration with German Films, the festival line-up features six films from the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) and a selection of compelling biopics and documentaries, comedies and family films.

Opening the festival is one of Germany’s biggest box office hits, the romantic comedy Long Story Short (Feste und Freunde – Ein Hoch auf uns!) featuring an all-star cast. A hilarious and poignant celebration of love and friendship, the film follows a group of friends across three years as they reunite at various parties.

Direct from the 2025 Berlinale comes Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay’s provocative thriller, Hysteria. A piercing reflection on the power of images and the dynamics of social hysteria, the film features the exciting new European actor, Devrim Lingnau, as an assistant director intern who is drawn into a dangerous game of secrets, lies, and paranoia on a film set when a burned Quran is discovered.

The German box office hit comedy and festival Special Presentation, Two to One (Zwei zu eins), is directed by Natja Brunckhorst and is led by Academy Award nominee Sandra Hüller. Set in 1990, the film is based on incredible true events when a group of East Germans take advantage of the chaotic economic situation to pull off an entertaining heist of soon-to-be-worthless East German marks.

The festival’s documentary Special Presentation is Andres Veiel’s acclaimed Riefenstahl, which explores the legacy of Leni Riefenstahl, who became world-famous for her Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will. In cooperation with the Goethe-Institut Australia, Riefenstahl director Andres Veiele will participate in a series of Q&A events about the film in Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne.

Another 2025 Berlinale film, What Marielle Knows (Was Marielle weiß), is a hilarious comedy of manners from Frédéric Hambalek that centres on what would happen if everything a family had been keeping private from each other suddenly became exposed. Sharply executed, the film explores the effects of revealing uncomfortable truths.

From the popular ‘Kino for Kids’ sidebar and presented by the Goethe-Institut Australia comes the winner of the 2024 German Film Award for Best Children’s Film, Winners (Sieger Sein). The uplifting coming-of-age film tells the story of eleven-year-old Mona, a refugee from Syria, whose talent for football is discovered.

The 2025 HSBC German Film Festival runs from Thursday, May 8, to Wednesday, May 28, at Luna Leederville, Luna on SX and Palace Raine Square. For more information and tickets, visit germanfilmfestival.com.au