Sydney Sweeney, Charli xcx and Ethan Hawke Power Robust Berlin Hot List

DIRECTOR Paweł Pawlikowski

STARS Sandra Hüller, August Diehl, Devid Striesow, Hanns Zischler

BUZZ An awards-season favorite in the making, the new period drama from Oscar-winner Pawlikowski (Ida, Cold War) features an all-star German cast, including Anatomy of a Fall‘s Sandra Hüller, in the timely true tale of Nobel Prize-winning writer Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler) and his daughter Erika (Hüller), who, in 1949, embark on a road trip across war-ravaged black Germany, from Frankfurt in the American zone, to Soviet-controlled Weimar.

SALES The Match Factory

DIRECTOR Yoshitoshi Shinomiya

BUZZ The global animé boom — see Demon Slayer ($779 million in global box office) and KPop Demon Hunters (Oscar contender and cultural juggernaut) — should have buyers flocking to Shinomiya’s feature-length debut, after working as an assistant director on 2016’s $400 million global smash Your Name. The plot follows a boy living in an abandoned fireworks factory racing to launch a mythical firework invented by his vanished father before the factory shuts down.

SALES Charades

DIRECTOR Dara Van Dusen

STARS Johnny Flynn, John C. Reilly

BUZZ An impressive cast gives this auteur Western, from debut director Van Dusen, crossover appeal. Flynn plays a Civil War vet whose dream of a new frontier life in Wisconsin becomes a nightmare when an epidemic threatens to destroy everything.

SALES Anton, New Europe Film Sales

DIRECTOR Luke Piotrowski

STARS Karen Gillan, Josh Hutcherson, Clive Owen

BUZZ One of the very few big genre projects heading to Berlin this year, this supernatural thriller, the directorial debut of Hellraiser and She Rides Shotgun screenwriter Piotrowski, should scare up plenty of pre-sales business among the market’s top-tier commercial buyers. The film is pitched as a mix of The Exorcist and Training Day, focused on a rookie priest (Hutcherson) and his devout mentor (Owen) transporting a possessed young woman (Gillan) for an exorcism, when she excapes and all hell breaks loose.

SALES North.Five.Six./CAA Media Finance

DIRECTOR Gary Fleder

STARS Nick Jonas

BUZZ A contained, high-concept action-thriller designed for maximum commercial lift, this latest package pairs pop-crossover star Jonas with genre veteran Fleder (Homefront, Reacher). Set over a single explosive Christmas at a remote estate, the film centers on a longtime bodyguard (Jonas) who becomes the unexpected heir to a billionaire’s private military company, triggering a lethal scramble for power among the tycoon’s spurned heirs.

SALES A Higher Standard (worldwide)

DIRECTOR Tate Taylor

STARS Catherine Zeta-Jones

BUZZ A sleek, contained psychological thriller built around a star turn, this latest package casts Zeta-Jones as an unorthodox marriage counselor whose therapeutic weekend retreat slides rapidly into manipulation and menace. Directed by Taylor (The Girl on the Train), from a script by the Van Dyke brothers (Don’t Worry Darling), Cupid offers commercially-minded buyers a global star and a darkly commercial hook.

SALES Upgrade (international), CAA Media Finance (U.S.)

DIRECTOR John Erick Dowdle

STARS Michael Shannon

BUZZ A modern reimagining of one of cinema’s foundational horror texts, this psychological chiller taps directly into the current appetite for elevated, IP-driven genre, from commercial leaning buyers. Dowdle (As Above So Below, No Escape) puts a contemporary spin on The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, casting Nuremberg and Man of Steel actor Shannon as a traveling mesmerist whose mind-controlled sleepwalker leaves a trail of brutal murders across small-town America.

SALES Anton (international), Anton / CAA Media Finance (North America)

DIRECTOR Justine Triet

STARS Mia Goth, Andrew Scott, Frank Dillane, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett.

BUZZ The English-language debut of boundary-pushing Palme d’Or winner Triet (Titane), described as a psychological thriller set in a seemingly idyllic but tightly enclosed setting, promises The Substance-style cross-over appeal for arthouse buyers.

SALES mk2 Films

DIRECTOR Quentin Dupieux

STARS Woody Harrelson, Kristen Stewart

BUZZ Dupieux (Yanick, The Second Act, Daaaaaali!), the absurdist clown king of French cinema, has locked in an A-list cast for this English-language excursion, with Harrelson playing a wealthy American industrialist who organizes a luxury trip to Paris for his estranged daughter (Stewart) in a bid to reconnect. Described as “Emily in Paris in hell,” it promises some high-end laughs for arthouse and specialty buyers worldwide.

SALES Studiocanal

DIRECTOR Simon Curtis

STARS Josh Gad

BUZZ Adulthood and Frozen star Gad takes on a rare tragicomic role in this Holocaust biopic from Woman in Gold director Curtis, playing Kurt Gerron, one of the most famous Jewish actors and directors in pre-Nazi Germany who, unlike his friends Marlene Dietrich and Fritz Lang, refused to leave the country when Hitler came to power. A prestige play with solid awards-season potential.

SALES Rocket Science (international), CAA Media Finance/WME independent (domestic)

DIRECTOR Elizabeth Chomko

STARS Javier Bardem, Kate Hudson

BUZZ A prestige rom-com play with clear theatrical and streaming upside, this package pairs Oscar winner Javier Bardem with two-time nominee Kate Hudson, marking Hudson’s first project since her recent Oscar nod for Song Sung Blue. Written and directed by What They Had filmmaker Elizabeth Chomko the project leans into proven commercial comps (Sleepless in Seattle, When Harry Met Sally) while offering international appeal through a Paris-set, transatlantic love story.

SALES 193

DIRECTOR Beth de Araújo

STARS Channing Tatum, Gemma Chan, Mason Reeves

BUZZ Indie European buyers come to Berlin searching for serious movies about serious subjects. Much like this feature, fresh from Sundance [where it won the U.S. Dramatic Competition, the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award], about the aftermath for a young girl (Reeves) and her parents (Tatum and Chan) after the child witnesses a violent sexual assault.

SALES Goodfellas (international), WME Independent/CAA Media Finance (North America)

DIRECTORS Franz Böhm, Suli Kurban

STARS Zar Amir, Jonathan Pryce, Amir El-Masry

BUZZ Holy Spider actress Amir plays an investigative journalist in this inspired-by-a-true-story tale of the reporters who exposed the Chinese government’s brutal treatment of their Uyghur minority. Just the sort of high-brow thriller boutique international buyers are hungry for.

SALES Beta Cinema

DIRECTOR Matt Ross

STARS Chris Hemsworth, Taron Egerton, Zazie Beetz

BUZZ Black Bear is targeting deep-pocketed global buyers, as well as studios and streamers, with this glossy New York crime saga pitched in the lineage of Goodfellas and Scarface. Thor star Hemsworth stepping into the lead, replacing Channing Tatum, if anything increases the appeal of this slick package that blends marquee star power with strong indie credentials thanks to director Ross (Captain Fantastic).

SALES Black Bear

DIRECTOR Babak Anvari

STARS Benedict Cumberbatch

BUZZ This real-life thriller, from Under The Shadow director Anavari, is targeting commercial buyers and the arthouse crossover crowd with its story set in the final days of the Afghan War. Ali, a young Afghan man, is fighting to find safe passage out of the country for himself and his family and puts his fate in the hands of an American stranger (Cumberbatch) 7,000 miles away, who is desperately trying to put the war behind him.

SALES Protagonist Pictures (international), WME Independent/UTA (U.S.)

DIRECTOR David Slade

STARS Lucy Hale, Jack Whitehall, Anjelica Huston

BUZZ Horror, as the only reliable indie genre left standing, will be everywhere at the EFM this year, but this character-driven creepy looks likely to stand out from the horde. Hale and Whitehall star as American siblings who return to their family’s estate in England to sell it, only for a mysterious woman (Huston), to arrive, triggering a twenty-four-hour siege by an ominous cult.

SALES HanWay (international), UTA (U.S.)

DIRECTOR Felix Van Groeningen

STARS Luca Marinelli, Charlotte Vandermeersch

BUZZ The team behind the 2022 cross-over hit The Eight Mountains — director Van Groeningen and co-stars Marinelli and Vandermeersch, reunite for this relationship drama, about a couple whose relationship is shaken when a long-kept affair is confessed. A grown-up European drama that should have grown-up buyers lining up.

SALES The Match Factory

DIRECTOR Jaume Collett-Serra

STARS Noah Jupe, Matthias Schweighöfer

BUZZ Cliffhanger and The Shallows director Collett-Serra is bringing this historic thriller to chilly Berlin, promising theatrical distributors a combo of period style and genre thrills with the story of an Allied soldier (Hamnet actor Jupe) who, following an ambush, must play dead to survive.

SALES WME International

DIRECTOR Lance Hammer

STARS Juliette Binoche, Tom Courtenay, Anna Calder-Marshall, Florence Hunt

BUZZ Oscar winner Binoche plays a daughter struggling to navigate her mother’s (Calder-Marshall) advanced dementia in this drama from Ballast director Hammer that has awards play written all over it.

SALES The Bureau Sales

DIRECTOR Philippe Parreno

STARS Charlotte Gainsbourg, Zoe Saldaña, Vicky Krieps

BUZZ Gainsbourg stars in this drama as Lucy, a musician who is slowly losing control over her body and voice. Sent by her psychiatrist (Saldaña) to a clinic in Spain, she meets Tony (Krieps) and her treatment becomes an unexpected journey of self-discovery. The combined thespian might of Gainsbourg, Saldaña, and Krieps in a single movie should have arthouse distributors the world over willing to submit.

SALES Goodfellas

DIRECTOR Karim Aïnouz

STARS Callum Turner, Riley Keough, Jamie Bell, Elle Fanning, Pamela Anderson

BUZZ A wealthy family begins to unravel when the truth of their mother’s death is revealed in this star-packed melodrama from Firebrand and Motel Destino director Aïnouz that seems tailor-made for the Letterboxd crowd of young cinephiles.

SALES The Match Factory

DIRECTOR JT Mollner

STARS Brie Larson

BUZZ A slice of creature horror from Strange Darling director JT Mollner (who just signed on to helm A24’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre TV series, starring Glen Powell), this genre play comes with the quality imprimatur of an Oscar-winning star (Larson) and the safe hands of JJ Abrams (Super 8, Star Trek) as a producer.
SALES Filmnation

DIRECTOR Egor Abramenko

STARS Sophie Wilde

BUZZ This market’s alien invasion thriller comes courtesy of the director of Russian sci-fi horror Sputnik (2020) and A24’s upcoming Altar. Talk to Me and Babygirl actress Wilde plays Sabile, a young woman planning her wedding with her fiancé at a secluded mountain resort when some unexpected guests crash the ceremony.

SALES Anton (international), Anton/Anonymous Content/WME Independent (domestic)

DIRECTOR David Mamet

STARS Anthony Mackie, Ben Mendelsohn, Emily Alyn Lind, Sharon Stone

BUZZ A prestige, dialogue-driven package with instant market recognition, this feature adaptation of Mamet’s Tony-winning play brings one of Hollywood’s sharpest satires back into circulation. Set inside the fictional American Prestige Studios, the film skewers power, ambition and moral vacancy as a newly promoted exec (Mackie) flounders amid studio politics, manipulative colleagues and a volatile movie star (Stone). With Mamet directing his own script, a heavyweight cast and a February 2026 shoot locked, the project should appeal strongly to upscale buyers chasing adult-skewing fare with awards potential and marquee names.

SALES The Solution Entertainment Group (international)

DIRECTOR Eva Sørhaug

STARS Angelina Jolie, Mary Stuart Masterson, Charlie Plummer, Jason Schmidt

BUZZ This mafia thriller follows a female gangster who has only a matter of hours to plan the perfect escape and protect her sons and herself from an abusive drug kingpin. With Eva Sørhaug, a Norwegian director best known for her U.S. TV work (on Yellowjackets, Your Honor, and Tokyo Vice, among others), behind the camera, buyers can be confident this commercial title will deliver.

SALES A Higher Standard (international), A Higher Standard/WME Independent (domestic)

DIRECTOR George Jaques

STARS Bella Ramsey, Neil Patrick Harris, Daniel Quinn-Toye

BUZZ The Last of Us star Ramsey plays a teen cancer survivor forced to attend a “chemo camp” with other kids in remission in this Brit comedy with clear crossover appeal.

SALES Embankment Films

DIRECTOR Ulrike Ottinger

STARS Isabelle Huppert, Birgit Minichmayr, Lars Eidinger

BUZZ German cult director Ottinger (Joan of Arc of Mongolia) reinvents the oft-told legend of the blood-sucking countess Elizabeth Báthory (Huppert) as a slice of Austrian horror camp. Huppert’s OTT turn as an aging vamp should alone be enough to draw buyers in for the kill.

SALES Magnify

DIRECTOR Josie Rourke

STARS Sydney Sweeney

BUZZ Sweeney’s boxing biopic Christy didn’t connect with audiences, but The Housemaid star continues to lend her A-list name to indie projects, and this period drama, from Mary Queen of Scots director Rourke, should have no trouble landing prestige international buyers. In the adaptation of the classic Edith Wharton novel, Sweeney is set to play Undine Spragg, an ambitious Midwest woman who attempts to ascend the social ladder in the turn of the century New York, armed only with “beauty, daring/hustle and sheer force of will.”

SALES Studiocanal

DIRECTOR Midi Z

STARS Sam Worthington, David Duchovny, Ke-Xi Wu

BUZZ The English-language debut of festival favorite Midi Z. (The Road to Mandalay, Nina Wu) is an expat crime thriller set in Tapei and inspired by true events that promises to bring Midi Z’s distinctive visual style and solid genre chops to a broader international audience.

SALES Mister Smith Entertainment (international), CAA (U.S.)

DIRECTOR Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert

STARS Aimee Lou Wood, Johnny Flynn, Vicky Krieps, Christian Friedel

BUZZ Wood and Flynn play Anna and Fydor Dostoyevsky in this cinematic take on the wife of the famed Russian novelist who saved him from a decline into gambling addiction. The film traces the couple’s honeymoon trip to the German spa town of Baden, where Fydor’s gambling spirals out of control, and the couple struggles to bring him back and to finish what will become his masterpiece, “The Idiot.” The impressive cast and arthouse cred of Szumowska and Englert (In the Name of, Never Gonna Snow Again) should guarantee this project a top slot on every boutique buyer’s watch list.

SALES The Match Factory

DIRECTOR Niki Byrne

STARS Chase Infiniti, Christopher Briney, Gillian Anderson, Jason Isaacs

BUZZ Chase Infiniti’s first project post her One Battle After Another breakout sees her playing a gifted mathematician who is recruited by Pascal (Briney) into an elite preparatory programme for the world’s most demanding mathematics competition: The Putnam Exam. A brainy thriller for upmarket theatrical buyers.

SALES HanWay

DIRECTOR Paul W.S. Anderson

STARS Isabela Merced

BUZZ Resident Evil helmer Anderson adapting the SEGA horror shooter looks like an bullseye for commercial buyers, especially given it’s obvious ancillary value and franchise potential. After surviving one zombie apocalypse in The Last of Us, Merced supposedly won’t be bothered by using a railgun to mow down a new army of undead.

SALES Rocket Science (international), CAA (Domestic)

DIRECTOR Claudio Borrelli

STARS Ethan Hawke, Orlando Bloom, Zaya Guarani

BUZZ Anaconda proved there’s money in the jungle movie, though this Amazon-set thriller is a true tale. Adapted from Monte Reel’s non-fiction book, it sees the freshly Oscar-nominated Hawke playing a washed-out Chicago cop, now a corporate gun-for-hire, who is sent to investigate a death deep in the rainforest. During his mission, he encounters the last surviving member of an Indigenous tribe. From Brazilian director Borrelli (Vultures), promises decerning distributors a propulsive thriller with a strong moral core.

SALES Protagonist Pictures

DIRECTOR Noah Segan

STARS John Turturro, Giancarlo Esposito, Will Price

BUZZ Indie buyers should be a light touch for this crime thriller, flying into Berlin off rave Sundance reviews. Featuring a stand-out John Turturro as a low-end, but dignified city hustler who unwittingly targets the wrong mark.

SALES MRC MEDIA RIGHTS CAPITAL

DIRECTOR Padraic McKinley

STARS Ethan Hawke, Russell Crowe

BUZZ One of Berlin’s few star-driven genre titles, the action-adventure stars Hawke as a battle-scarred veteran hired during the Great Depression to smuggle a fortune in gold across 100 miles of wilderness to save what remains of his family.

SALES WME Independent

DIRECTORS Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini

STARS Jessica Chastain, Chris Pine

BUZZ This new feature from American Splendor directors Bergman and Pulcini is set in the U.S. publishing world and follows influential book editor Margot (Chastain), whose decades-long friendship with charming publisher Quin (Pine) is threatened when he is accused of misconduct. If Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt hasn’t soured buyers on star-driven #MeToo tales, they’ll be hungry for this meaty moral drama.

SALES The Veterans/CAA Media Finance

DIRECTOR Takashi Miike

STARS Charli xcx, Milly Alcock, Norman Reedus, Kiko Mizuhara, Sho Kasamatsu

BUZZ Few genre packages at this year’s EFM feel as instantly market-ready as this latest provocation from cult maestro Miike (Audition, Ichi the Killer). Set in Kyoto, the slasher-horror follows three lifelong friends on a reunion trip that curdles into terror when Katie (Charli xcx) becomes possessed by a violent, tortured spirit (Mizuhara), unleashing a nightmare steeped in classic Japanese horror traditions. With a buzzy cast led by the Brat pop star, hot off the launch of her A24 feature The Moment (and who will also produce) this high-concept horror looks primed to draw bids from prestige genre buyers and hardcore horror labels.

SALES The Veterans/CAA Media Finance

DIRECTORS Jason Osder, William Lafi Youmans

BUZZ Combining elements of true crime and political documentaries — two of the hottest genres in nonfiction filmmaking right now — this doc examines the killing of a Palestinian American activist in Southern California and a 40-year quest for justice.

SALES Dogwoof

DIRECTOR Travis Knight

STARS Peyton Elizabeth Lee, Jacob Tremblay, Angela Bassett, Carey Mulligan, Mahershala Ali, Awkwafina

BUZZ From Laika, makers of Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, and Kubo and the Two Strings, comes this new stop-motion feature, adapted from Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis’s 2011 novel, in which two classmates enter a hidden magical forest near Portland on a mission to save an infant kidnapped by crows. Laika is a brand unto itself and the 2024 re-release of Coraline, which grossed $50 million+ worldwide, shows there is a global appetite for their dark emotional animated tales.

SALES Filmnation