Cynthia Beatt
Cynthia BEATT (1949, Jamaica) is a British filmmaker based in Berlin who grew up in Jamaica and the Fiji Islands. She studied at the Bath Academy of Art in England, later working for 24 Frames in London before settling in Berlin in 1975. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, she collaborated with Arsenal and the International Forum of New Cinema, contributing to retrospectives dedicated to Roberto Rossellini, Fritz Lang, Jean Rouch, Max Ophüls and other major filmmakers. Her films often move between political history and poetic reflection, as seen in Cycling the Frame (1988), made with Tilda Swinton. A House in Berlin (2014) follows a woman who uncovers her connection to a historic Berlin building, leading her into a past where questions of Jewish dispossession, German restitution law and the expropriation of Palestinian land collapse into a single, unresolved narrative. Her film Heart of Light – Eleven songs for Fiji (2026) is having its world premiere at IFFR 2026.
Filmography
(selection) Beschreibung einer Insel (Study of an Island) (1979, co-dir), Böse zu sein ist auch ein Beweis von Gefühl/Fury Is a Feeling Too (1983, short doc), Cycling the Frame (1988, short doc), The Party: Nature Morte (1991), The Invisible Frame (2009, doc), A House in Berlin (2014), Heart of Light – eleven songs for Fiji (2026)
Cynthia Beatt at IFFR
-
Heart of Light – eleven songs for Fiji
Cynthia Beatt | 166' | Germany | World premiere
A speculative autobiography realised as a movingly monumental work of pure cinema. -
Constant
Sasha Litvintseva, Beny Wagner | 40' | Germany | None
Available on Festival Scope Pro from 26 January 9:00 CET to 14 February 9:00 CET -
A House in Berlin
Cynthia Beatt | 96' | Germany | World premiere
A woman discovers that she has a distant but personal relationship to a historic building in Berlin and embarks on a journey into the past.…