My Highlights of FILMFEST MÜNCHEN 2026

I left this year's FILMFEST MÜNCHEN with much more than a list of films I enjoyed. It was a week of conversations, discoveries and memorable encounters that reminded me why film festivals remain my favourite way to experience cinema.

Over the course of the festival I watched thirteen films, attended Q&As, met people who share the same passion for cinema and, perhaps most surprisingly, got to meet two filmmakers whose work has been part of my own journey as a film lover.

Meeting Pedro Almodóvar was one of those moments I never imagined when I first started watching his films years ago. I also had the chance to meet Ira Sachs, whose films Love Is Strange and Little Men played an important role in helping me understand myself as a queer person.

Looking back, five films have stayed with me more than the others. They are the ones I hope audiences will seek out when they arrive in cinemas.

There are very few films that touch me as deeply as Nuestra Tierra did.

After many years of research, Lucrecia Martel returns with a documentary centred on the murder of Javier Chocobar, one of the leaders of the Chuschagasta Indigenous community in Argentina. What begins as the reconstruction of a legal case slowly becomes something much larger: a reflection on memory, identity and the meaning of belonging to a place.

Rather than focusing exclusively on the injustice of the trial, Martel patiently builds the history of the community through testimonies, photographs, letters and family memories. We begin to understand not only what was lost, but why the land itself continues to matter generations later. The documentary asks difficult questions about ownership, colonialism and the violence that still shapes Indigenous communities today.

What impressed me most is that the film never asks the audience for pity. It simply presents a reality that continues to exist in Argentina but could just as easily belong to Peru or many other countries in Latin America.

I also admired its editing. Although I do not usually watch many documentaries, this never felt like a conventional non-fiction film. The rhythm, structure and emotional progression resemble a carefully constructed screenplay, making the real testimonies even more powerful.

I left the cinema thinking not only about Argentina, but about Latin America as a whole and how many of these conversations remain unresolved.

Fatherland was the film I had been waiting for ever since it was announced. After writing about Pawlikowski several times on the blog over the past months, finally seeing it on the big screen was one of the highlights of my festival.

Thankfully, it exceeded my expectations.

Set in post-war Germany, the film follows Thomas Mann and his daughter Erika as they travel between West and East Germany in 1949. Through their conversations, Pawlikowski explores a country attempting to rebuild itself while many of the people who supported the Nazi regime continue to occupy positions of power in politics, the military and cultural life.

What impressed me most is that the screenplay never simplifies these questions. Rather than judging its characters, it allows them to express different ideas about patriotism, responsibility and the future of Germany. Mann still believes in the country that shaped him, while Erika increasingly realizes that both East and West are trying to use his reputation for political purposes.

For me, however, the film reaches something much more universal than German history. It becomes a story about loving your country while struggling to find reasons to believe in it anymore. How do you keep hoping for a place that has disappointed you? How do you remain attached to your homeland when its past fills you with shame and its future with uncertainty? Those questions extend far beyond postwar Germany, and they are what stayed with me long after the screening.

Ryusuke Hamaguchi is already one of my favourite contemporary directors, but with All of a Sudden I believe he may have made his most ambitious film yet.

Unlike the concise structure of Fatherland, Hamaguchi allows this story to unfold patiently. Every conversation, every silence and every relationship feels carefully developed until the characters become impossible to separate from the ideas they discuss.

The protagonists are a philosopher and a palaeotheologian, and their conversations move naturally between capitalism, care, climate change, politics and the responsibilities we have towards one another. These discussions are demanding, but never feel academic for their own sake. Instead, they constantly return to everyday life and force the audience to question its own priorities.

What fascinated me most was the way language itself becomes part of the film. French and Japanese coexist naturally, reflecting the characters' personal histories rather than serving as a stylistic device.

The story begins inside a private care home in Paris, where a new method of caring for Alzheimer's patients called Humanitude is being introduced. From there, Hamaguchi slowly builds a friendship that quietly transforms the lives of both protagonists.

It is a long film, but one that rewards patience. I left the cinema reflecting not only on its ideas but also on my own understanding of care, work and human connection.

This became the unexpected discovery of my festival.

After Cannes, the reactions were positive but more restrained than I expected, and the absence of awards lowered my expectations. Still, Ira Sachs is one of those directors I trust almost unconditionally.

Set in New York during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, the film follows a theatre actor preparing his next production while living with the illness. Like many of Sachs' films, it is less interested in dramatic twists than in the quiet intimacy between people who deeply care for one another.

Before the screening, I was not entirely convinced that Rami Malek was the right choice for the lead role. By the end of the film, however, that hesitation had disappeared. Sachs wisely avoids theatrical excess and instead allows moments of silence and contemplation to carry the emotional weight of the story.

The performance that stayed with me the most, however, was Tom Sturridge's. He becomes the emotional centre of the film, embodying the love, patience and quiet resilience suggested by the title itself.

The apartment, friends, family, the theatre world and the artistic community of 1980s New York create an atmosphere that feels both vibrant and fragile. It is a film about illness, certainly, but even more about love and the everyday gestures that give life meaning.

I already know this is a film I will return to many times.

The final film I saw at the festival also turned out to be one of the biggest surprises.

I enjoyed I Saw the TV Glow, but I was not prepared for just how inventive Jane Schoenbrun's new film would be.

Using the mythology of a fictional slasher franchise, Schoenbrun constructs a wonderfully unpredictable exploration of horror, queer identity, nostalgia and filmmaking itself. The film constantly shifts between comedy, absurdity and genuine emotion without ever losing control of its tone.

Gillian Anderson is magnificent, but what impressed me most was the confidence of Schoenbrun's direction. The film constantly walks a fine line between complete chaos and careful structure, and somehow always knows exactly where it wants to go.

Few films feel genuinely original today. This one does. Every scene surprised me, every narrative turn challenged my expectations and, by the end, I had the feeling of having experienced something completely unique.

It was the perfect way to end my week at the festival.