Berlinale Panorama Selection, Árru, Leads Indigenous Cinema Alliance’s EFM 2026 Presence

The Indigenous Cinema Alliance (ICA) will make its mark at the 2026 EFM and Berlinale. The lineup features amazing films and talent, led by the official Panorama selection, the Sámi musical drama Árru.

Directed by Elle Sofe Sara (Sámi), Árru is set amid the breathtaking landscapes of Sápmi. Reindeer herder Maia fights to protect her ancestral lands from a looming mining project. As protests rise, she turns to her charismatic uncle Lemme for help, but his presence reignites deep-buried traumas. Maia must choose: save the land at the cost of her family or surrender it to break the silence.

Additional highlights in the official festival selection include two other works. From Colombia, Jülapüin Yonna (The Dream of Dance) is a short film by Wayuu filmmaker Luzbeidy Monterrosa Atencio, presented in the festival’s Generation (14plus) section. The film is a poetic, non-linear work that centers a Wayuu girl as a bearer of knowledge and futurity, using the Yonna dance as a living language to mourn and resist the environmental and spiritual devastation caused by extractivist mining on Indigenous land. In the Forum Expanded section Cass Gardiner (Anishinaabe Algonquin) and Juan Mateo Menendez present Land Invaders, the first-ever video game featured in the section, an 8-bit piece that reimagines the history and legacy of first contact, inviting players symbolically to confront intergenerational trauma through arcade-style gameplay.

Also of note is the selection of two 2026 ICA Fellows for the EFM Toolbox Programme, an immersive, tailor-made initiative designed to support underrepresented producers from around the world by providing first-hand, real-world experience at the European Film Market. 

The selected fellows are:

Brooke Collard is a Ballardong Whadjuk Noongar producer and writer. She advocates for genuine First Nations and LGBTQIA+ representation. Her work focuses on community healing and agency, guided by the principle No Stories About Us, Without Us. She won the 2023 AACTA Regional Pitch for Reclamation, which is currently in development.

Johannes Vang is an award-winning Sámi-Norwegian filmmaker from Northern Norway. His films, blending fiction and documentary, explore Arctic Indigenous culture and identity among his generation. Screened internationally, his latest, Let Our Mountains Live, continues his Sámi human rights series.

Also, as part of their EFM presence, the ICA will support acclaimed Canadian filmmaker Gail Maurice’s Métis love story Blood Lines. The female-led queer film will be featured in Telefilm Canada’s Perspective Canada market screenings. Blood Lines is the first Canadian film to center Métis culture and identity, featuring the Michif language, spoken by only around a thousand individuals worldwide.

The ICA’s recent efforts have helped elevate the visibility of Indigenous-led projects and support their positioning in global markets. Notable titles include A Sámi Wedding (Heajastallan), selected for the 2025 EFM Berlinale Series Market, which premiered at TIFF 2025 and was recently acquired by CBC. Māori gothic horror Mārama, which premiered at TIFF 2025, has since been picked up for US distribution by Dark Sky Films, following a deal brokered by MPI International, with ICA supporting the film’s international promotion. Additional ICA-supported titles that have gone on to secure sales and distribution include Aotearoa New Zealand action-drama Ka Whawhai Tonu (US distribution, Indican Pictures), documentary Wilfred Buck (US, Moving Images Distribution), Canadian comedy Lucky Strikes (Canada, Crave), and Bolivian feature The Condor Daughter/La Hija Cóndor (World sales, Bendita Film) that recently closed North American deals (US, Outsider Pictures, Canada, A-Z Films).