Friend Zone. Open-Air-Kino und Gespräch. Box Office Around The World 2025

In the organizer's words:

On two weekends in August, the Schlüterhof becomes a meeting place for film enthusiasts from all over the world - with summery drinks and snacks. The open-air festival presents six current cinema productions that are box office hits in their countries of origin but have not yet been shown on the big screen in Germany. Before the screenings, the Humboldt Forum invites you to get in the mood with thematic spotlights - with prominent guests!

The release of every major film production is accompanied by great anxiety and guesswork: will the audience buy into the story told, the star constellation and the film language and flock to the cinema en masse?

Box Office Around The World is a film festival that aims to unravel this mystery from the audience's perspective. Unlike Hollywood productions, which are designed for the global market, "box office hits" from other regions of the world often provide surprising insights into what moves people in Lagos, Buenos Aires or Bangkok. The Schlüterhof is located in the heart of Berlin - and surrounded by collections from many cultures around the world.

Over two weekends in August, the Box Office Around the World festival presents six current cinema productions that are audience successes and box office hits in their countries of origin, but have not yet been shown on the big screen in Germany.

Representatives of the Berlin communities from Thailand, Argentina, Nigeria, Vietnam, Brazil and India have selected the films together with curator Dorothee Wenner and developed an accompanying program: Before the open-air screenings, the team - with a star-studded line-up - will shine a thematic spotlight on each film.

Curator of the film program

Dorothee Wenner is a freelance filmmaker, curator and author based in Berlin.

Since 1990 she has worked in various positions for the Berlinale, the Berlin International Film Festival, currently as the festival's delegate for the Sub-Saharan Africa region. She has been a member of the board and jury of the African Movie Academy Awards in Lagos since its inception in 2005. Her latest work as a filmmaker is the web series Kinshasa Collection. Since 2020 she has been working as a consultant for film/cinema at the Humboldt Forum in Berlin and initiated the Cinema Spaces Network.

Dorothee Wenner curated the Box Office Around The World 2025 festival for the third time with representatives from the communities.

Friend Zone. Quang Dung Nguyen, Diep The Vinh / Vietnam 2025 / 120 min. / Romantic comedy

Toan is the type of tour guide who wins the hearts of female tourists. At the end of a long day of excursions, he can hardly save himself from advances. But he rebuffs the ladies, saying that a woman is waiting for him at home. However, the woman is not "his" wife, but his best friend An. Pretty, but completely deranged and desperate, he finds An, who has once again fallen for the wrong man and is terribly heartbroken. Toan knows how to distract and comfort her with routine and ingenuity - it's not the first time, the two have known each other since school. And have been best friends ever since. And An desperately wants it to stay that way. But Toan wants more - could things finally work out between them after An's last disaster?

This turbulent love story, which is a remake of a successful Thai film hit and could actually be set anywhere, unfolds against the backdrop of Vietnam's most beautiful landscapes and sights, fantastically exaggerated insta-staging and glorious tourist excesses, with the local flair making the film so special. After all, the customs between lovers and friendships are quite different in Vietnam than elsewhere, especially in the borderland between these forms of human affection.

Program

20:00: Talk with Vanessa Vu (journalist), Dr. phil. Trương, Hồng Quang (Germanist and literary translator) and Dorothee Wenner (moderator) in German

21:00: Film screening

Participants

Vanessa Vu

- 10 EUR, reduced 5 EUR

- FSK 18

- Schlüterhof: Entrance: Portal 5

- Languages: Vietnamese with English subtitles

- Belongs to: Box Office Around The World 2025