BBC Two to celebrate 50 Years since David Bowie's Berlin days with new documentary

The BBC will air a new documentary on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer in autumn 2026, to mark 50 years since David Bowie moved to Berlin in Germany.

Bowie in Berlin follows the period between 1976 and 1978, when Bowie stepped away from fame and into the streets of cold-war Berlin. The film is directed by Francis Whately, the filmmaker behind the bowie documentaries: Five Years, The Last Five Years, and Finding Fame.

The film is said to "capture a version of Bowie that's less often seen, both as an artist and as a person", focusing on David Robert Jones, Bowie's real name.

The documentary is executively produced by Louis Theroux and Mandy Chang, and features the voices of four women who knew Bowie during this time: Clare Shenstone, Romy Haag, Sarah-Rena Hine, and Sydne Rome.

For Theroux, this is a personal passion project. “There’s a wonderful unity of time and place to Bowie’s period in Berlin,” he said. “He hit bottom, but he also found himself making some of his most personal music, then relaunched himself for the first time without a mask, as himself.”

The documentary builds on the 2024 Radio 4 audio version of Bowie in Berlin and joins other Bowie-related content from the BBC, including the Music Uncovered podcast David Bowie: Changeling, hosted by his long time friend, Kate Moss, which looked at his musical journey through the early '70s.