When cinema looks back, it reveals how culture, conflict and creativity shape collective memory.
Berlin, December 2025
The Berlin International Film Festival has announced a major retrospective program that turns its spotlight on the 1990s, bringing together a selection of iconic films by Werner Herzog and Spike Lee that helped define the decade’s cinematic contours. The initiative arrives at a moment when cultural institutions are reassessing the forces that shaped contemporary visual storytelling, and the choice of Herzog and Lee underscores the diversity of artistic approaches that emerged during that transformative period. Herzog’s existential explorations and Lee’s incisive social narratives occupy different aesthetic territories, yet both offer lenses through which audiences can revisit a decade marked by rapid geopolitical change, globalisation and evolving discourses on identity.
The retrospective highlights works that have had enduring influence not only for their formal boldness but also for their capacity to engage with themes that resonate beyond the era in which they were made. Herzog’s films from the 1990s explore the intersection of human ambition and environmental extremity, charting landscapes of psychological as well as physical desolation. His singular vision, often blurring documentary and fiction, invites viewers into encounters that speak to the limits of perception and the persistence of wonder. For many critics, his work from this period remains a testament to cinema’s power to probe the edge of experience and its capacity to render the ineffable in ways that defy easy categorisation.
In parallel, Spike Lee’s films from the same decade foreground questions of race, politics and community in the United States. Lee’s narrative style — marked by its urgency, rhythmic dynamism and unapologetic engagement with social issues — captured the complexities of a society in the throes of cultural reckoning. His films confront audiences with stories that refuse to be neutral, refracting personal struggle through broader societal tensions. In doing so, Lee helped expand the possibilities of mainstream cinema to accommodate perspectives that had long been marginalised.
The decision by the Berlinale to pair these two auteurs reflects a curatorial intent to emphasise the multiplicity of cinematic language in the 1990s. While Herzog and Lee operate in distinct registers, their films share an insistence on confronting reality rather than retreating into aesthetic insularity. Their works illustrate how formal innovation and thematic commitment can coexist, challenging audiences to engage with cinema as both art and commentary. This agenda aligns with the festival’s broader mission to foreground film as a medium that participates in cultural discourse rather than merely reflecting it.
The retrospective will feature restorations of seminal titles that showcase the breadth of each director’s contribution. For Herzog, selections include his meditative examinations of isolation, obsession and the human condition in settings that range from sprawling deserts to remote frontiers. For Lee, the spotlight falls on films that weave narrative energy with social critique, exploring community resilience, historical memory and the politics of representation. Together, the programs offer audiences an opportunity to trace the evolution of cinematic form and to consider how these films have influenced the filmmakers and audiences that followed.
Film scholars see this retrospective as an invitation to reconsider the 1990s not as a distant cultural moment but as a formative era whose artistic productions continue to shape contemporary practices. The decade witnessed shifts in global power, the rise of new media landscapes and the renegotiation of identity politics — dynamics that reverberate in the works of Herzog and Lee. Their films, while rooted in specific contexts, offer universal questions about agency, belonging and the relationship between individual subjectivity and larger societal structures.
For festival audiences, the program represents more than a nostalgic survey. It functions as a platform for intergenerational dialogue, inviting young viewers unfamiliar with the original release contexts to engage with films that helped define cinematic possibilities for decades to come. The juxtaposition of Herzog and Lee also encourages reflection on how different cultural traditions deploy narrative, image and sound to make sense of the world.
As the selection rolls out on Berlin screens, the retrospective has sparked anticipation among critics and cinephiles alike. Its emphasis on cinematic lineage invites reflection on how films remain alive in audiences’ collective memory and how the act of revisiting can yield new insights into the art form’s capacity to interrogate, provoke and inspire.
Phoenix24. The visible and the hidden, in context. / Phoenix24. Lo visible y lo oculto, en contexto.