Kicking off next week, the 2026 Berlinale will bring no shortage of new discoveries, and one on our radar is the feature debut from Saša Vajda. The lights, they fall—starring Mohammed Yassin Ben Majdouba, Flor Prieto Catemaxca, Mahira Hakberdieva, Safet Bajraj, and Shanthi Philipp—follows a 16-year-old who drifts through summer on the outskirts of Berlin while a palliative nurse accompanies his ailing mother during her last days. Ahead of the world premiere in Berlinale’s Generation section, we’re pleased to exclusively debut the first trailer.
“In making this film, I was particularly drawn to the altered sense of time that emerges when a person passes away,” said Saša Vajda. “I wanted to explore this shift in perception through a simple narrative very much inspired by Cesare Zavattini’s neorealist screenplays – particularly Umberto D., a film that revolves around a single moment in the life of its main character, illuminating it in all its complexity.”
“Somewhere between classic neorealism and Andrea Arnold’s raw social dramas, Saša Vajda positions himself with his subtle coming-of-age film The Lights, They Fall. The tentative drifting of the amateur actors and the grainy liveliness of the 16mm film create a poetry of their own,” noted German distributors Grandfilm.
See the exclusive trailer below: