Watching a film in English in Bern no longer means opening one cinema website after another and hunting for the few undubbed sessions. The English-language screenings from cinemas across the city are gathered in one place at English Cinema Bern, and the listings are updated daily. Check what is showing in English, pick a time, and go.
How did people find English films before?
The old routine was a weekly chore. You would visit each cinema's site in turn, scan the programme for the few screenings that were not dubbed into German, decode the local labels, and hope you had not missed anything. Bern is largely a German-speaking city, so most mainstream showings are dubbed and the English sessions are scattered.
English Cinema Bern does that legwork for you. Instead of checking each cinema, you look at one page of films that pulls together the English-language screenings from the cinemas we cover.
What do OV and E/d/f mean?
Swiss cinema listings use short labels to tell you the language a film is shown in:
- OV stands for Originalversion, the original version. A film marked OV runs in its original language rather than a dubbed one, so an English-language film shown as OV is in English.
- E/d/f means the film is in English (E) with German (d, for Deutsch) and French (f, for Français) subtitles.
When a screening carries one of these labels, you are hearing the original English soundtrack. Dubbed showings are marked differently, usually just with the German title and no OV tag.
Which cinemas show films in English in Bern?
We cover the following cinemas, each with its own page showing what it currently has in English:
- Pathé Westside sits in the Westside shopping and leisure centre in the west of the city, at Riedbachstrasse 102.
- cineABC is on Moserstrasse, north of the centre.
- cineBubenberg is on Laupenstrasse, a short walk from the main station.
- cineCamera is on Seilerstrasse, close to the station.
- cineClub is also on Laupenstrasse, near the station.
- cineMovie is on Seilerstrasse, in the same central cluster.
Apart from Pathé Westside out west, most of these screens sit in and around the city centre near the main station, so it is easy to combine a film with the rest of a day in town. You can see all of them on our cinemas page.
How do I keep up with what is showing?
The simplest way is to bookmark the films page and check it whenever you fancy a night out, since it is refreshed daily. If you would rather have it come to you, subscribe to the weekly newsletter and get the English-language screenings in Bern in your inbox.
