Back to the question of class – Film culture and social inequality

Today, one’s socio-economic background still determines one’s chances of success in society. In politics, there is currently a lack of engagement with the issue of class, while since years there has been a growing demand for a sensitivity to class differences in literature and art. Cinema tells us about class relations as well, but in the film industry itself, discussions about it are largely absent.

Through some of 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 of the “Berlin Critics’ Week” is at the centre of three events and a workshop for writers. On 12 February, as part of the festival’s opening conference at the Akademie der Künste, the “Critics’ Week” will create discussions on current questions around class with Marco Müller (festival director / producer), Jovana Reisinger (author / director), Francis Seeck (mediator / professor / author), Andreas Kemper (sociologist), Nuray Demir (artist / curator), Heike-Melba Fendel (author / head of Barbarella Entertainment) and Katalin Gennburg (politician), among others.

The aim of the thematic focus at this year’s “Critics’ Week” is to break the silence on class issues in the film industry and bring the slowly re-emerging debates on class relations to the country’s largest film festival. In discussions with colleagues, “Critics’ Week” will look for blind spots, class shame, status politics and spaces of possibility – always in relation to cinema as a social space that has the potential to overcome class boundaries through shared and anonymous film experiences.

This year’s thematic focus of the “Critics’ Week” is being organised in collaboration with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. A film programme will follow on 14 February at 7 pm at Hackesche Höfe Kino.