In most contemporary films that play with color and black-and-white cinematography, the visual grammar is consistent: the present is in color because it is real, accessible, immediate. The past is in black-and-white because it is historical, distant, memory. Yellow Letters, directed by Ilker Catak at Berlinale 2026, inverted this convention entirely. Cinematographer Judith Kaufmann shot the present in black-and-white and reserved color for the flash-forwards—moments that represent a future the character cannot currently access.
This inversion is not decorative. It is the film's visual thesis. Yellow Letters tells the story of someone who experiences loss and falls into a cycle of misery and addiction. The film's present—the reality the character is trapped in—is rendered in black-and-white. That choice signals that the present is the past, that the character is not actually living in the moment, that what we are watching is already historical. The color flash-forwards represent a possible future, an imagined or feared future, a temporal space the character cannot access cleanly from where they are.
The ASC's interview with Catak and Kaufmann confirmed the design intent: "The script specifically noted that everything would be in black-and-white, apart from the flash-forwards, which were shot in color. It is quite a dark story... and we wanted to reflect that in the cinematography." The darkness Kaufmann and Catak reference is not just narrative darkness—the addiction, the loss, the suffering. It is visual darkness, the compression and absence of color information that black-and-white cinematography provides.
What makes this approach particularly effective is that in most interpretations, color signals hope. The future is in color because the future is where good things might happen. But in Yellow Letters, color does not read as hope. It reads as uncertainty. The flash-forwards are in color, which makes them visually distinct from the present, but they are also moments the character experiences at a distance, moments that do not feel accessible from where the character is now. The color is not warm. It is dislocated.
For cinematographers, the technical challenge here is making black-and-white cinematography feel like the present rather than like the past. Conventional black-and-white in contemporary cinema often signals historical period or memory because we associate the aesthetic with older films. Kaufmann had to shoot the black-and-white in a way that felt contemporary, that felt like now, despite the absence of color information. The presence of modern production design, contemporary clothing, and current technology in the black-and-white cinematography prevents the viewer from defaulting to "this is a memory." Instead, the black-and-white reads as depression, as the absence of vitality, as the color literally drained from a present that has become uninhabitable.
The color flash-forwards, by contrast, must avoid reading as simple relief. Kaufmann had to shoot them with enough visual weight and presence that they feel as complicated as the black-and-white material. The color cannot be too saturated, too beautiful, too seductive. It must feel possible but not safe. Achievable but not inevitable. The color renders the future distinct and visible, but the cinematography prevents the viewer from reading the color as optimistic. The future is in color, but the color is not warm.
This approach asks something of the viewer: to accept that visual hierarchy does not follow conventional emotional logic. Black-and-white is typically read as distance or memory. Here, it is the present. Color is typically read as vitality or hope. Here, it is displacement and uncertainty. Kaufmann's cinematography trusts the audience to understand that visual meaning is constructed, not inherent.
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