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Movie Weather
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Anwar Hashimi, Shahrbanoo Sadat in No Good Men © Virginie Surdej
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Welcome to Dispatch, the first issue of the Diasporist's new culture newsletter. Here you'll find reports on film and literature, interviews with writers and artists, and other cultural tidbits that may be of interest to our readers. In this first issue, Diasporist Managing Editor, Schayan Riaz, covers news from world cinema.
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There are two types of conversations I’m having these days. The first concerns the weather: how cold it's been in Germany, how ice blasts have incapacitated our ability to think clearly, how often we have slipped and fallen on the sidewalks. The second type concerns cinemas: how warm and cozy they are right now, how they offer a reprieve from all the snow and wind, how beautifully heartbreaking Hamnet is (I haven’t seen Hamnet yet because I’m staying indoors and watching Industry season 4).
This conversation usually leads to the Berlin Film Festival, which starts today. Inarguably the most important film-related event in the city’s cultural calendar, this year’s Berlinale will run until February 22 and opens with Shahrbanoo Sadat’s No Good Men.
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Sadat is an Afghan filmmaker based in Hamburg, and her third feature is set in Kabul, shortly before the Taliban’s return in 2021. Naru (played by Sadat herself) is the only camerawoman at Kabul TV, and she is of the opinion that ‘no good men’ exist in Afghanistan. She has left her philandering husband and has given up on love, focusing instead on her career and infant son — not an easy choice in a patriarchal society. But then her path crosses with Qodrat, Kabul TV’s star reporter. No Good Men seems to a) be a great premise for a romantic comedy and b) have all the necessary ingredients to be a solid film festival opener: it feels funny and charming and socially relevant and tragic and political, all in equal measure.
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Sadat can strike this tone well: In January, I managed to catch the world premiere of her short film Super Afghan Gym at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. It’s set in a Kabul gym during the hour the space is reserved for women of all ages, who come together to train and to talk about their bodies, their husbands, and their lives. There’s something bittersweet about the world Sadat has created. And it’s doubly fascinating given that — like No Good Men — Super Afghan Gym was shot in Hamburg. One wouldn’t be able to tell that it wasn’t shot in Afghanistan.
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Berlinale 2026
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Berlinale Palast © Richard Hübner
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For those in town during the Berlin Film Festival, here are some of the films we are most looking forward to:
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Monster Pabrik Rambut / Sleep No More © Palari Films 2026
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Indonesian horror films seem to be a thing, as my Netflix algorithm keeps pushing them on me. The Berlinale will be showing two of those, which just proves the popularity of the genre: Ghost in the Cell by Joko Anwar and Sleep No More by Edwin. One look at the terrifying trailer of the latter and I’m already sold.
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Another double-bill from Asia, this time from Pakistan, showcases cinema from a country that is hardly represented at major film festivals. Lali by Sarmad Sultan Khoosat has its world premiere in the Panorama section (which traditionally is the queer cinema strand of the Berlinale) and Ghost School by Seemab Gul will be premiering in the children’s section.
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Isabelle Huppert © Amour Fou Vienna, Amour Fou Luxembourg, Heimatfilm / P. Domenigg
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No European film festival is complete without French icons Isabelle Huppert or Juliette Binoche. This year, Huppert plays The Blood Countess in legendary filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger’s reinterpretation of the vampire myth (co-written with Elfriede Jelinek!). And Binoche headlines Queen at Sea, a family drama about a daughter and father trying to determine what’s best for their wife and mother as she experiences advanced dementia.
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Faraz Shariat made a big splash with his debut Futur Drei at the Berlinale in 2020. After producing and directing for television, he finally delivers his sophomore feature called Staatsschutz. Here, along with his scriptwriters Jee-Un Kim, Dr. Sun-Ju Choi, and Claudia Schaefer, he explores far-right violence, taking a stark look at Germany’s public prosecution system.
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Arundhati Roy © Film Heritage Foundation
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The “Berlinale Classics” and “Retrospective” sidebars are always worth checking out. This year, the festival is showing a restored version of In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones, written by a young Arundhati Roy, who will be attending the screening. And as part of the “Lost in the 90s” program, there will be a rare chance to see a 35mm print of Spike Lee’s media satire Bamboozled.
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In Other News
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Event Recommendation: Palinale
Running in tandem with the Berlinale, residents can find the counter-programmed Palinale, which was launched last year to give space to Palestinian voices as well as other marginalized groups and overlooked struggles, for example in Sudan or Congo. This year’s edition opens with Michel Khleifi’s Fertile Memory and follows with his seminal Wedding in Galilee, with further highlights including a tribute to legendary filmmaker Mohammad Bakri, who passed away late last year, and a panel exploring “Cultural Zionism & Hollywood”. The full program can be found here.
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Film Still from The President's Cake
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Film Recommendation: The President's Cake
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2025 was a good year for German arthouse cinemas — attendance went up by 5.5% and revenue rose by 8.8%, showing that the post-pandemic recovery isn’t slowing down. Topping the arthouse charts was Fatih Akin’s film Amrum, the simple story of 12-year-old Nanning at the end of World War II who searches for white bread, butter, and honey on the North Frisian island to make his depressed mother happy (the mother is depressed because Germany has lost the war, and Hitler is dead).
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Amrum would make for an interesting double-bill with Hasan Hadi’s The President’s Cake, an Iraqi film released last week and still playing in German cinemas. In the 90s, despite economic sanctions imposed by the West, Saddam Hussein mandated that all Iraqis celebrate his birthday. Nine-year-old Lamia is chosen by her school to bake the cake for everyone. Without having any of the ingredients at home and hardly any money, she sets out to find eggs, sugar, and flour to avoid punishment. She encounters a gallery of diverse characters on her journey through the Iraqi Marshes. This is a very fine debut, with a memorable starring performance by child actress Baneen Ahmad Nayyef and beautiful cinematography.
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Film Still from Once Upon a Time in Gaza
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One last film recommendation: Once Upon a Time in Gaza
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I promise this won’t be a cinema-only newsletter in the future, but I would be remiss not to mention Once Upon a Time in Gaza, which releases in Germany today. It’s a shame that this brilliantly dark comedy by the Nasser brothers isn’t playing in more cinemas, and from the looks of it is being drowned out by the Berlin Film Festival (in the capital city at least).
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Set in 2007, it tells the story of unlikely friends Yahya and Osama, who run a falafel shop in Gaza that doubles as a drug-dealing front. What sounds like the plot of an average gangster film is a much more complex tale of friendship, loyalty, hero worship, and statehood, with a stylishly gritty look and pitch-perfect performances. Seek out this gem if you can.
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