Doors at HKW for CICLOPE Festival Day 2 open at 9:00 AM.

An all-day dedicated co-working space is available at HKW.

Stay online while you’re OOO at the Festival; you’ll find the Home of Work on the lower ground floor of the venue.

View the work of the finalists on the CICLOPE Awards 2026 Shortlist, ahead of this year’s Winners being announced at the Awards Ceremony on Thursday evening.

Categories screened in Session I today: CICLOPE Craft – AI Craft

Bine Bach is a very hands-on, practical director. So naturally, she decided to make a music video with robots. About robots.

For José González’s Losing Game (Sick) promo, Bine got her hands on some of our new mechanical colleagues and decided to see what they could actually do. Because emerging technologies don’t seem to be going away. Rather than standing at a safe distance with her arms crossed, waiting for the whole thing to blow over, Bine decided to poke it with a stick.

What followed was a process of testing, failing, adjusting, testing again, failing more, and eventually developing what can only be described as prompt elbow.

View the work of the finalists on the CICLOPE Awards 2026 Shortlist, ahead of this year’s Winners being announced at the Awards Ceremony on Thursday evening.

Categories screened in Session II today: CICLOPE Craft – Production

At first glance, Go Mongolia looked like a tourism campaign. It wasn’t. The brief was far more ambitious: to create a film that would help Mongolians rediscover pride in their own country—not by showing them places they had never seen, but by helping them see familiar places with fresh eyes.

This session will explore how great filmmaking craft goes beyond aesthetics. At a time when technology makes it easier than ever for a single creator to work remotely and independently, Go Mongolia reminded us that understanding a culture still begins by being there—working alongside the people who know it best.

Enjoy all-day complimentary barista coffee from the coffee carts at HKW.

Filter coffee, tea and soft drinks are available in the cafe area, while bottled water and sodas are available from the fridges located around the venue.

C:FUTURE is CICLOPE’s initiative dedicated to the next generation of the creative industry. Rather than discussing the future of young talent, it puts young talent at the centre of the conversation.

Taking place across all three days of the Festival, each session features a different group of emerging talent from different disciplines. But every conversation follows the same three themes: Expectations. Reality. Hope.

By repeating the framework with different voices, C:FUTURE reveals where a new generation shares common ground, where perspectives diverge, and what the industry can learn from both.

Great ideas rarely die because they’re bad. They die more quietly, through perfectly reasonable decisions. Step by step, originality is sanded down into something everyone agrees with. Music is where this phenomenon is easiest to see. Everyone has an opinion about it, and everyone mistakes taste for judgment.

This conversation brings together voices from different points of the creative and production process to explore how great ideas are shaped, challenged and, sometimes, unintentionally diluted in the pursuit of consensus.

With the exhibition Not All Travellers Walk Roads—Of Humanity as Practice, the 36th Bienal de São Paulo comes to Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW).

The Berlin edition of one of the oldest and most influential biennials unfolds as a distinct constellation of artistic positions, including newly conceived, readapted, and site-specific works.

The contemporary art exhibition takes place throughout the venue, and is open to all CICLOPE Festival pass-holders on Wednesday 7 & Thursday 8 October.

As an immigrant with a condition known as “place blindness”, Alma Har’el learned to move through the world without a reliable sense of direction or belonging. That dislocation became the starting point for a career built without a map. 

In conversation with writer and creative director Kervins Chauvet, she traces that evolution through her music videos and commercials, to founding Free the Work, directing Honey Boy, collaborating with Bob Dylan, and creating Lady in the Lake. A look at transforming outsiderness and uncertainty into a cinematic language of her own.

See our handy list of places to eat and drink in the area here.

Or check out Not All Travellers Walk Roads—Of Humanity as Practice; the contemporary art exhibition unfolding around HKW and available for all CICLOPE Festival pass-holders to visit.

View the work of the finalists on the CICLOPE Awards 2026 Shortlist, ahead of this year’s Winners being announced at the Awards Ceremony on Thursday evening.

Categories screened in Session III today: CICLOPE Craft – Direction

The Match, directed by Juan Cabral, Santiago Franco

The Match tells the story of the iconic match between Argentina and England, played at the Azteca Stadium during the 1986 Football World Cup. Using rare archival footage such as Maradona’s controversial “Hand of God”, the film reconstructs that event as a living memory but also as the culmination of more than two hundred years of tension, encounters, and conflict between the two nations. From the earliest moments of contact and dispute to the Falklands War as a direct precursor, the film traces a historical journey that reframes what happened on the pitch. In doing so, it subtly contrasts the beauty of football with the lingering absurdity of war, allowing the echoes of both to resonate into the present day.

Presented by: Flora Fernández Marengo, Producer, The Match

For ChatGPT’s first large-scale brand campaign, OpenAI, Isle of Any and SMUGGLER director Miles Jay took an unexpectedly human approach. Shot on 35mm (not AI!) using custom lenses and built around precisely choreographed single takes, the series of tiny films depended on the smallest details working together: casting, micro-performances, camera movement, music and timing.

At a moment when AI can generate almost anything, this is a case study about a very different creative challenge: using every tool available to make technology feel less technological — and more human.

Director, musician and multidisciplinary artist Marleaux Desire created Illimiteworld and @nobodydirectedthis, so the work could speak before his name or title could define it.

In this talk, Marleaux explores how building a distinct creative identity gave him the freedom to move between disciplines, and how multidisciplinary creatives can develop a voice of their own without reducing themselves to a single medium, title or aesthetic.

Enjoy all-day complimentary barista coffee from the coffee carts at HKW.

Filter coffee, tea and soft drinks are available in the cafe area, while bottled water and sodas are available from the fridges located around the venue.

What does it take for a brand to earn an audience’s attention on the world’s biggest sporting stage? Directed by Mark Molloy and produced by SMUGGLER and 24/7, adidas’ 2026 World Cup campaign Backyard Legends was made with the ambition and complexity of a feature film.

SMUGGLER Managing Director Sue Yeon Ahn joins Molloy for an intimate conversation about how it was made — from writing and rewriting as the film revealed what it needed to become, to holding onto a clear creative North Star through months of production and post, and continuing to push the work without compromise.

Across music videos, commercials, feature films, animation—and sometimes simply paper, scissors and a camera—legendary director Michel Gondry has spent his career turning limitations, accidents and handmade ideas into an unmistakable cinematic language.

In this wide-ranging conversation with Antje Wewer (SALON Magazin), Gondry reflects on the experiences that have shaped and transformed that language: fatherhood, creative rivalry, collaboration, new technologies and the passage of time.

Enjoy an open bar and DJ set hosted by Compass Rose and its global network of production partners, at HKW.

The bar is located in the cafe area on the lower ground floor of the venue.

CICLOPE Fringe Event: WTBR is taking over Soho House Berlin for drinks. Come raise a glass with the crew. Everyone’s welcome. Register to be on the guest list here.

This event has limited capacity – a confirmed spot on the guest list is required for entry. Spots will be filled in the order responses are received.

Join Lauren Greenfield for a private artist walkthrough of her immersive exhibit Social Studies, at Berlin’s Fotografiska Museum.

All CICLOPE pass-holders are then invited to join Lauren at the museum’s Cafe Bar for drinks and hors d’ouevres, where she will also be signing her latest monograph, The Queen of Versailles: An American Allegory.

Free Museum entry with CICLOPE pass after 18:00, and guests are welcome to visits exhibitions until close at 23:00.

What makes something worthy of attention? As culture evolves faster than ever and choice becomes limitless, across directing, producing and commissioning acts of selection collectively shape the cultural landscape, and determine which ideas are carried forward.

Bringing together voices from film, music, events and advertising, this conversation examines the human judgment behind meaningful curation.