Todd Haynes To Head 2025 Berlinale Competition Jury

Veteran filmmaker Todd Haynes will head the competition jury at the 2025 Berlin Film Festival .

The announcement was made this morning by the festival. In a statement, Berlinale director Tricia Tuttle described Haynes as a "dazzlingly gifted writer and director."

"His body of work is at once stylistically versatile but also unmistakably his," Tuttle said. "Ever since his debut feature Poison won the Teddy Award in 1991, the Berlinale has followed and loved his filmmaking, and we are overjoyed to have him join the festival as the President of the International Jury for our 75th edition."

One of the pioneering voices of 90's American cinema independent cinema, Haynes made his feature with Poison, an experimental sci-fi flick starring Edith Meeks, Larry Maxwell, Susan Gayle Norman, Scott Renderer, and James Lyons. The film won the queer film prize at the Berlinale, in 1991, and won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. His other credits include Safe (1995), Velvet Goldmine (1998), the fictional Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There (2007), which won the Grand Jury Prize in Venice, the mini-series Mildred Pierce (2011), Carol (2015), Wonderstruck (2017), Dark Waters (2019), The Velvet Underground (2021).

Haynes' last feature was 2023's May December starring Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore. The film debuted at Cannes where it was picked up by Netflix and landed a best screenplay at that year's Academy Awards. Haynes had been set to next direct a gay romance flick starring Joaquin Phoenix but the film was shelved after Phoenix pulled out.

As Deadline first reported , Phoenix left the set of Haynes' movie weeks before it was set to begin production in Guadalajara, Mexico. Producers tried to put the project back together before the production completely died. Local crew members are due money. The movie was set to star Phoenix and Danny Ramirez ( Top Gun: Maverick ) as two men in the 1930s who develop an intense romantic relationship and leave Los Angeles for Mexico. Christine Vachon was producing the pic alongside Pam Koffler.

Next Year's Berlin Film Festival runs February 13–23. The festival will mark Tuttle's first edition at the helm. Tuttle replaced the festival's former dual-directors Carlo Chatrian and Mariette Rissenbeek. Tuttle was last head of the BFI's London Film Festival.