Berlinale’s 2026 Co-Production Market selection sees strong showing from genre titles

The Berlinale Co-­Production Market, now in its 23rd edition, has acted as a springboard for more than 400 completed feature films and 24 series. They include 2026 Berlin Competition titles Yellow Letters by Ilker Catak and We Are All Strangers by Anthony Chen, as well as this year’s opening film, Shahrbanoo Sadat’s No Good Men, which can trace its origins to the 2021 market, where it was first pitched to partners and financiers.

Martina Bleis was part of the Co-Production Market’s founding team in 2003, and took over as head and project curator in 2015. At that time, there were only a handful of official co-production markets, notably CineMart at Rotterdam. Bleis recalls that former Berlinale director Dieter Kosslick wanted to create a home for producers. “Everyone was shopping their projects around in cafés or trying to meet people at the market, but there was no organised meeting place,” she says.

The idea was to pre-select high-quality projects with at least 30% of financing in place, and link them up with potential partners. The first edition was put together in a hurry, taking place in a single room with around 200 people. “We only started preparing it in December [2003],” recalls Bleis. “Now, we launch the call for submissions in August and select thoroughly.”

The Co-Production Market has “professionalised” and expanded over the years, says Bleis, who heads a staff of 13 at the festival. In the lead-up to the Co-Production Market, a selection team of four readers plus Bleis whittle down the feature submissions, while another four choose the series projects.

The selection is based on a number of factors: the co-production experience of the submitting production company; the project being suitable for a co-production; and the quality of the project, which needs to have a script ready for Berlin. The minimum 30% funding rule also still applies. “It means the final line-up is made of ‘real’ projects, not ‘maybe’ projects,” says Bleis.

Primed and ready

This year the Co-Production Market has selected 35 film projects from 390 submissions, as well as 10 series projects and 10 book projects. They will be presented via individual 30-minute table meetings to some 600 potential partners, including producers, sales agents, distributors and broadcasters.

Representatives of each project can expect up to 33 individual meetings over the course of the four-day event (February 14-17). The meetings are carefully curated by the Co-Production Market team, who seek to match projects with suitable partners. In total, 1,500 meetings are organised during the event, held this year in a new venue — the upper floors of the Atrium Tower in Potsdamer Platz. “We will have nice views over the city,” promises Bleis.

Casting her eye over the feature selection, Bleis says genre is strongly represented this year. Projects include the second film from director Amanda Nell Eu, whose debut Tiger Stripes won top prize in Cannes Critics’ Week in 2023. Her latest, Lotus Feet, is a fantastical body horror set on a remote rubber estate in 1938 British Malaya.

Other genre selections include Indian director Nihaarika Negi with psychological horror Feral, about two female servants who rebel against their English madame on a 1950s Himalayan colonial estate; and Spain’s Eduardo Casanova with horror thriller The Black Goat from producer Morena Films.

This year’s selection also includes comedy projects such as US directors Andrea Ellsworth and Kasey Elise Walker’s The Dispute, which was developed at the Sundance Institute and comes direct from CineMart in Rotterdam. The film is about a failing designer duo from South Central Los Angeles who leave everything behind for a magazine shoot in London that could change their lives.

Elsewhere, Mexico’s Alonso Ruizpalacios, whose most recent film was 2024’s La Cocina starring Rooney Mara, participates with thriller The Transmigration Of Bodies, while Children Of Sarajevo filmmaker Aida Begic takes part with Sylvia, about a former Playboy model who seeks to exact revenge on the man who abused her daughter.

The Co-Pro series selection includes The Granddaughter, the first series project from filmmaker Catak. It follows a man who, after his wife’s death, sets out to find her mysterious granddaughter who was raised in an isolated far-right community. The six-part series is based on a book by bestselling German author Bernhard Schlink, whose novel The Reader was adapted into the 2008 film by Stephen Daldry.

• The lowdown on the Berlin Film Festival 2026 titles