Fipresci, the international film critics association, has announced its winners for the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival, with Norwegian filmmaker Dag Johan Haugerud’s Drømmer (Dreams (Sex Love)) taking the top honor in the Competition section.
The film, the concluding chapter of Haugerud’s Sex, Love, Dreams trilogy on emotional and physical intimacy, follows 17-year-old Johanne (Ella Øverbye), who becomes infatuated with her new teacher, Johanna (Selome Emnetu). As Johanne navigates her romantic awakening, the lines between memory and fiction blur, culminating in a self-reflective literary account of first love. Infused with Haugerud’s signature droll humor and sensitive observations, the film marks a shift in the trilogy’s focus to queer first love. M-Appeal is handling world sales.
In the newly introduced Perspectives competition, Slovenian director Urška Djukić was honored for her debut feature Kaj ti je deklica (Little Trouble Girls), a coming-of-age drama that follows the reserved Lucia (Jara Sofija Ostan) as she explores sexuality, friendship, and the intersection of sin and desire. The film is being sold worldwide by Heretic.
The Panorama prize went to Bajo las banderas, el sol (Under the Flags, the Sun), the feature documentary debut of Paraguayan filmmaker Juanjo Pereira. The film excavates lost audiovisual archives from Alfredo Stroessner’s 35-year dictatorship, revealing how media was used to shape national identity and enforce authoritarian rule. Assembled from recovered propaganda films, newsreels, and declassified documents, Pereira’s work reconstructs a history long omitted from Paraguay’s educational system. Cinephil is handling worldwide sales.
Tatiana Fuentes Sadowski’s La memoria de las mariposas (The Memory of Butterflies) won the Fipresci prize in the Forum section. Using grainy analog footage, the Peruvian documentary tells the forgotten story of two indigenous Peruvian boys forcibly taken to Europe, intertwining their history with that of Peru’s during its brutal 35-year dictatorship. Miti Film produced the documentary together with Perpetua Cine and Oblaum Filmes.