Conference 2025
Thematic focus 2025:
Back to the Class Issue – Film Culture and Social Inequality
>>>The pre-sale of tickets for the opening conference at Akademie der Künste (Pariser Platz) has started HERE.<<<
Film evening in a Berlin local pub (tba), Monday, February 10, 8pm
Conference at the Akademie der Künste Berlin, Wednesday, February 12, 6pm
Film programme and discussion at Hackesche Höfe Kino, Friday, February 14, 7pm
Today, one’s socio-economic background still determines one’s chances of success in society. Cinema tells us these stories, but in the film industry itself, discussions about it are largely absent. Through the films, debates, lectures and texts of Critics’ Week 2025, local and international guests from various disciplines, up-and-coming authors, and audience members will engage with the recent debates on social inequality and classism, as triggered by authors such as Didier Eribon.
This year’s thematic focus is at the centre of three events. Before the Berlinale begins, we’ll step away from our usual venues and convene instead at a local pub, where Berliners will be invited to debate their relationship to cinema – without any experts and without a stage. On February 12, as part of our opening conference at the Akademie der Künste, we will discuss current questions around class with Marco Müller (festival director/producer), Jovana Reisinger (author/director), Francis Seeck (mediator/professor/author), Andreas Kemper (sociologist), Biene Pilavci (film director), Nuray Demir (artist/curator), Heike-Melba Fendel (author / head of Barbarella Entertainment), Christopher Andrews (film director) and Katalin Gennburg (politician). On February 14, there will be a film programme followed by a debate on the depiction of class relations in cinema – including the classic film The Vampires of Poverty by Luis Ospina and Carlos Mayolo as well as contemporary works by Vika Kirchenbauer, Friedl vom Gröller, and Adriano Valerio.
‘Fewer and fewer people in our country have a real chance to develop and utilise their abilities. […] Nowhere do fewer children achieve social advancement.’
– Marcel Fratzscher, Distribution war: Why Germany is becoming increasingly unequal (2016)
Even Marcel Fratzscher, head of the German Institute for Economic Research, does not mince words when he criticises politicians in Germany for their lack of class awareness. Current developments in Germany, as in many other countries, speak for themselves: the contradictions of the capitalist system are coming to a head, social polarities are intensifying and yet parties and institutions are failing to address class relations. This has grave consequences: right-wing parties and movements are currently benefiting from this development, managing to capitalise on the frustrations of many socially disadvantaged people – for example, the AfD in Germany, which claims to oppose elites in the name of the people while at the same time promoting measures that would exacerbate social inequality. The success of such movements has led to a general rightwards shift in the public debate, with class-based inequality no longer considered together with other forms of oppression, but rather played off against them – in the linking of social issues with the issue of migration, for instance.
While politics is letting the right take the lead on issues of social justice, the issue of class has recently received a great deal of attention in literature – through widely discussed autobiographical publications by critical authors such as Didier Eribon (Returning to Reims), Édouard Louis (Change: A Novel) and Annie Ernaux (The Years), or, in Germany, Daniela Dröscher (Zeige deine Klasse), Christian Baron (Ein Mann seiner Klasse) and Marlen Hobrack (Klassenbeste). In their books, these authors politicise their own socialisation, tell of their class advancement or defection; of changes in their material lives and their self-perception. In doing so, they also explicitly consider the art and culture sector, negotiate the significance of taste and forms of distinction and class-related world views and ideologies, and reflect on both middle-class barriers to belonging and high culture initiation rituals. Within these texts, art often appears as the currency of social advancement. In many places today, a preoccupation with film and film culture is also an expression of class privilege and can serve to reinforce it – even as cinema continuously produces images and narratives about social inequality, and directors such as Ruben Östlund, Andrea Arnold, Sean Baker, and Bong Joon-ho celebrate success with them at major festivals.
The lack of engagement with the issue of class in politics and the growing demand for a sensitivity to class differences in literature and art: for Critics’ Week 2025, we are addressing these two interrelated developments, shortly before the new Bundestag elections. As part of our thematic focus Back to the Class Issue – Film Culture and Social Inequality, we want to break the silence on the class issue in the film industry and bring the slowly re-emerging debates on class relations to bear upon the country’s largest film festival. Together with our guests and colleagues, we are looking to shed light on blind spots, class shame, status politics, and spaces of possibility – and always in relation to the cinema as a social space that has the potential to overcome class boundaries through shared and anonymous experiences. The thematic focus of this year’s Critics’ Week has been developed in collaboration with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
The thematic focus events at a glance:
February 10, 8pm
Venue TBA
Evening of films and debate at a Berlin neighbourhood pub
NB: This event will be held in German
February 12, 6pm
Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz 4, 10117 Berlin
Discussion with Marco Müller (festival director/producer), Francis Seeck (mediator/professor/author), Nuray Demir (artist/curator), Heike-Melba Fendel (author/actress), Katalin Gennburg (politician), Biene Pilavci (film director) and Christopher Andrews (film director), moderated by Amina Aziz and Dennis Vetter
Lectures and readings by Jovana Reisinger (author/director) and Andreas Kemper (sociologist)
Welcome by Peter Badel (cinematographer, Academy of Arts)
February 14, 7pm
Hackesche Höfe Kino, Rosenthaler Str. 40-41, 10178 Berlin
Film programme followed by a debate:
Emergency Exit (dir: Friedl vom Gröller, Austria 2024)
Compassion and Inconvenience (dir: Vika Kirchenbauer, Germany 2024)
Vampires of Poverty (dir: Luis Ospina and Carlos Mayolo, Colombia 1977)
Casablanca (dir: Adriano Valerio, France/Italy 2023)
Guests: Adriano Valerio, Vika Kirchenbauer, among others
Critics’ Week 2025 will take place from February 12 to 20, 2025. The film programme starts on Thursday, February 13 at Hackesche Höfe Kino.
Press contact: Elisabeth Mohr, presse@wochederkritik.de
Copyright for the conference motif: video still from Compassion and Inconvenience, 2024 (c) Vika Kirchenbauer, VG Bild-Kunst
Berlin Critics’ Week is an event organised by the German Film Critics Association and supported by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds, the Stiftung Kulturwerk of the VG Bild-Kunst and the Rudolf Augstein Foundation. The opening conference will be held in cooperation with the Film and Media Arts Section of the Akademie der Künste.
This year’s thematic focus was developed in cooperation with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.