Broadway biopic and film with Jessica Chastain among Berlinale highlights

Richard Linklater’s long-awaited Broadway biopic Blue Moon starring Ethan Hawke and Margaret Qualley, a Mexican love story with Jessica Chastain as a socialite who falls for a émigré ballet dancer, and a British family drama set in Spain featuring Emma Mackey and Fiona Shaw will premiere in competition at next month’s Berlin film festival.

The 75th edition of the Berlinale, Europe’s first major cinema showcase of the year, will open on 13 February with the world premiere of The Light by Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) about the intertwined fates of a Syrian refugee and a middle-class German family.

The British actor Tilda Swinton will pick up an honorary Golden Bear at the opening ceremony for lifetime achievement.

The event’s new director, Tricia Tuttle, an American film journalist and curator who previously ran the BFI London film festival, unveiled the 19 contenders vying for the prestigious Golden and Silver Bear top prizes, to be chosen by a jury led by the US director Todd Haynes.

At a news conference in the German capital, Tuttle said that beyond Berlin’s trademark political fare, there would be “love stories and comedies and offerings of hope and magic and wonder” in the programme of the 11-day event.

In Linklater’s Blue Moon, Hawke plays legendary lyricist Lorenz Hart who is struggling with alcoholism as his former collaborator Richard Rodgers fetes the opening of his smash musical Oklahoma!, in a cast also including Andrew Scott and Bobby Cannavale.

Chastain turns in what organisers called a “blistering” performance as a lovestruck socialite navigating the immigration divide in Michel Franco’s Dreams, their second collaboration after Memory.

Mackey (Sex Education) joins Vicky Krieps and Shaw in an adaptation of Deborah Levy’s acclaimed novel Hot Milk about a mother and daughter grappling with their fragile bond in a holiday beach house.

Previous Golden Bear winner Radu Jude will present Kontinental ‘25 in a Transylvania-set drama exploring the Romanian housing crisis and the rise in nationalism.

The French Oscar winner Marion Cotillard leads Lucile Hadžihalilović’s film-within-a-film The Ice Tower featuring cinema shock master Gaspar Noé playing a director.

Vivian Qu’s Girls on Wire promises to pick up the tradition of Hong Kong action blockbusters with a twist in the tale of a single mother who kills a drug dealer.

Gabriel Mascaro’s The Blue Trail, a thriller set in the near future about elderly Brazilians forced to move to resettlement camps, tells the story of a 77-year-old woman who breaks out and embarks on an adventure in the Amazon.

Ukrainian documentary Timestamp by Kateryna Gornostai offers a searing look at how schools are still functioning in wartime.

Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You features a “ferocious” performance by Rose Byrne as a mother whose child is afflicted with a mysterious illness.

Berlinale fixture Hong Sang-soo of South Korea will unveil What Does That Nature Say To You co-starring his longtime collaborator and off-screen partner Kim Min-hee.

The German veteran actor Hanna Schygulla stars in Yunan by the Ukrainian-Syrian director Ameer Fakher Eldin, playing a woman offering solace to a refugee on a remote island.

In the Berlinale Special section outside the main competition, the American director Julia Loktev will show the first part of her five-hour documentary My Undesirable Friends about Russian independent journalists forced into exile after the Ukraine invasion.

Organisers had previously announced that Mickey 17, a sci-fi feature starring Robert Pattinson from Parasite director Bong Joon-ho, would screen out of competition.

And Tom Shoval will premiere A Letter to David, his documentary about the Israeli actor David Cunio, a hostage of Hamas still being held in Gaza.

Last year, the Berlinale ran into controversy after the Palestinian and Israeli directors of documentary No Other Land denounced Israel’s “apartheid” from the awards stage, triggering angry accusations of antisemitism from German politicians.

Asked about a Guardian interview last month in which Tuttle warned that a polarised debate in Germany about Israel’s military action in Gaza was leading some international artists to shun the festival, she said she had been working on “outreach” to reassure film-makers that “the festival is a space for open dialogue”.

The Berlinale, billed as the world’s largest film festival that is open to the public, ranks with Cannes and Venice among the top global events promoting new cinema.

US industry magazine Variety called the programme under Tuttle’s leadership “less niche and more crossover than recent Berlinale lineups” while keeping “the edginess and iconoclastic flare that has symbolised the festival since its inception”.

Last year, the Senegalese-French director Mati Diop’s documentary Dahomey on the first major return of looted treasures from Europe to Africa won the Golden Bear.