Berlinale 2026 – Palmares. Awards for Romanian films

This year’s Berlin Film Festival, which took place from February 12 to 22, has announced its winners, including Romanian productions or with Romanian participation.

At the 76th edition, 270 films were screened and the international jury led by Wim Wenders chose the winners from the 22 feature-length films in competition.

The big winner was the drama “Yellow Letters” (Germany, France, Turkey), directed by İlker Çatak. The film centers on Derya and Aziz, a famous artist couple from Ankara. They lead a fulfilling life with their 13-year-old daughter until an incident at the premiere of their new play changes everything. The cast includes Özgü Namal, Tansu Biçer, Leyla Smyrna Cabas and İpek Bilgin.

Romania in five festival sections

Romanian film productions were presented in five sections of the Berlin Film Festival – Berlinale Shorts, Forum, Generation Kplus, Berlinale Special (Berlinale Co-Pro Series 2026) and Retrospective. In addition, the European Film Market awarded the EFM Distributor Award 2026, worth €7,500, to Ștefan Bradea and Monica Felea, founders of Bad Unicorn.

The Berlinale Shorts competition included the documentary “Shot Reverse Shot/ Plan Contraplan”, by Radu Jude and Adrian Cioflâncă, which confronts the photographs taken by American journalist Edward Serotta in communist Romania with clandestine Securitate images, and the Romania-France-Lebanon co-production “Someday, a Child (Yawman ma walad)”, by Marie-Rose Osta, which tells the story of a boy with supernatural powers who lives under the daily threat of conflict in a Lebanese village. The latter was awarded the Golden Bear.

In the Forum section of the Berlinale, the feature film “De capul nostru”, directed by Tudor Cristian Jurgiu, was selected for the Forum section, which deals with the emotional isolation of a teenage girl who tries to create a surrogate family for two runaway children.
Here, the FIPRESCI Award went to “AnyMart” by Yusuke Iwasaki and the Ecumenical Jury Award to “River Dreams” by Kristina Mikhailova.
The Romanian film received the C.I.C.A.E. Art Cinema Award.

In the Generation Kplus section, Paul Negoescu’s “Atlas of the Universe”, a Romania-Bulgaria co-production that follows the journey of a 10-year-old boy in search of his lost left shoe, offering young audiences a story about courage, friendship and self-discovery.

The first prize at the Berlinale for a Romanian children’s film went to “Atlas of the Universe”, directed by Paul Negoescu, produced by Radu Stancu and Ioana Lascăr (deFilm) and co-produced by Poli Angelova, Nikolay Todorov (Screening Emotions, Bulgaria) and Carmen Rizac (Avanpost Media, Romania), which received the Special Mention of the International Jury of the Berlinale Generation Kplus, the children’s film section of the festival.

The Festival retrospective included Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujică’s Videogramme einer Revolution, a historical documentary based on the archives of the Romanian Revolution of 1989, and the Berlinale Special Gala presented Heysel 85 by Teodora Ana Mihai, a film about the tragedy at Heysel stadium and the complexity of human responsibility in the face of the catastrophe.

The main winners of the 2026 Berlin International Film Festival

Golden Bear for Best Film – “Yellow Letters” by İlker Çatak

Silver Bear – Grand Jury Prize – “Salvation” by Emin Alper

Silver Bear – Jury Prize – Queen at Sea by Lance Hammer

Silver Bear for Best Director – Grant Gee, for “Everybody Digs Bill Evans” (with actors Anders Danielsen Lie, Bill Pullman, Laurie Metcalf in the cast)

Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance – Sandra Hüller for Rose, directed by Markus Schleinzer

Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance – Anna Calder-Marshall and Tom Courtenay, for their roles in Queen at Sea, directed by Lance Hammer

Silver Bear for Best Screenplay – Geneviève Dulude-de Celles, for “Nina Roza”, which she also directed

Silver Bear for outstanding artistic and technical contribution – Anna Fitch and Banker White, for the documentary “Yo (Love is a Rebellious Bird)”

Golden Bear for Best Short Film – “Someday a Child”, by Marie-Rose Osta (Romanian participation)

Silver Bear for Short Film – “A Woman’s Place is Everywhere” by Fanny Texier

Berlinale Shorts Filmmaker Award – “Kleptomania” by Jingkai Qu

Berlinale Documentary Award – “If Pigeons Turned to Gold” by Pepa Lubojacki

Special Mention Berlinale Documentary Award – “Tutu”, by Same Pollard; “Somethimes I Imagine Them at a Party”, by Daniela Magnani Hüller

Best Debut Feature – “Chronicles From the Siege” by Abdallah Alkhatib