20th XPOSED Queer Film Festival Berlin

Curated by Bartholomew Sammut, Pol Merchan, Thomas Schallhart, Nastaran Tajeri-Foumani, Merle Groneweg, Michi Stütz.

A celebration of twenty years of queer world- and filmmaking, this XPOSED anniversary program revisits forgotten classics, presents performances that reanimate cinema as a ritual space, and showcases short film programs where the body becomes a shifting landscape of desire and resistance.

With XPOSED XPANDED, filmmakers and artists from previous editions are re-invited to reimagine, reinterpret, and restage their works as interactive performances. Engaging with the concept of “expanded cinema,” the program rethinks the cinema space as one of interactivity and performativity, moving beyond passive spectatorship toward a more embodied, collective experience.

Bartholomew Sammut is part of the selection committee for Panorama and Berlinale Series, and also the founder and co-director for the XPOSED Queer Film Festival Berlin. They are a queer film enthusiast and lover of the experimental form.

Pol Merchan (no pronouns, he/him) is an artist, filmmaker, and curator, foregrounding neurodiversity and accessibility as ways to rethink how cinema is created, experienced, and shared. He has worked in the selection committee for the Panorama section at the Berlinale since 2014 and joined XPOSED in 2019 after winning the XPOSED Queer Short Film Fund with his film Pirate Boys.

Thomas Schallhart is a political educator based in Berlin. He is the co-founder of the educational collectives Critical Queer Solidarity, Bildung für utopischen Wandel and the decentralized antimilitarist collective No More War. He joined XPOSED Queer Film Festival in 2018.

Nastaran Tajeri-Foumani [no pronouns] is a film and cultural worker, systemic therapist, curator, and DAW-consultant. Since 2015, Nastaran has taken on several roles at the XPOSED Queer Film Festival Berlin. Since 2019, Nastaran has served on the festival’s board and co-created and co-curated the first XPOSED Pop-Up Campus in 2023.

Merle Groneweg is a film programmer, writer, and cultural worker, writing for independent media such as Missy Magazin, Jacobin, and analyse&kritik. They joined XPOSED Queer Film Festival Berlin in 2015 and have since contributed to the festival in different roles, including as a programmer since 2017.

Michael Stütz has been head of the Panorama section of the Berlinale since June 2019 and Co-Director of Film Programming since July 2024. From 2011 to 2017, he was co-director of the XPOSED International Queer Film Festival in Berlin where he was responsible for curating numerous programmes.