Every year our programme team visit a host of film festivals - the likes of Cannes, Berlin, Toronto and Tampere are highlights in the industry calendar - in search of films, partnerships and creative ideas they can bring back to Bristol, to Watershed, and to you.

Head of Programme Mark Cosgrove has just returned from the 62nd Berlin Film Festival, where he Tweeted his instant thoughts throughout. He sat down to write us a more in depth, over-140-characters response to his festival experience here:

If a week is a long time in politics then a week at a film festival is an eternity where you not only travel across time and space but into the minds of a terrified female victim of war, a confused second generation British/Egyptian teenager and a reluctant revolutionary. Taking in five films a day can leave the imagination bewildered and becalmed, ravaged and enlightened. What follows are just a few of the highlights and observations gleaned from one of the world's most expansive, and important, film festivals.

In his introduction to the Berlinale catalogue festival director Dieter Kosslick drew attention to the fact that it has been one year since the Arab Spring; an event that was tackled in many films across the programme. He also stressed the importance of freedom of expression for artists; another theme close to the festival's heart. These two strands found outstanding manifestation in two documentaries: The Reluctant Revolutionary and Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry.

In parenthesis - this year it felt like truth was much stranger and more emotionally engaging than fiction: documentaries were getting to the heart of the matter much more directly than drama.

Sean McAllister's The Reluctant Revolutionary follows Kais, a tourist guide in Yemen, as the revolution unfolds. His work is already perilous and drying up because of the Taliban and when a protest camp sets up in 'Change Square' in Yemen's capital Sana'a, Kais is non-committal, and adamant the protests won't solve anything. Over time, however, he begins to get involved and engaged: transforming from pro-President to, yes, a reluctant revolutionary, joining angry protestors in the increasingly bloody city streets.

Director McAllister is either foolish or brave (or possibly both) because he is obviously the only foreigner around in a volatile environment with secret police mingling amongst the crowds of protesters.  This courage has overwhelmingly paid off and what he captures is quite extraordinary. Would the conventional media have caught footage of state troops firing into the crowds, following Kais into makeshift hospitals? The scenes are devastating. McAllister moves you along at a breathless pace, the mood of change and resilience a pervasive, all-consuming presence. It's quite incredible.

The art of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is inextricable from his politics and for a Chinese artist, that can be life (or at least liberty)-threatening. Ai Weiwei's work is not confrontational for the sake of it: rather, it draws much-needed attention to the state's wilful dismissal of its own people.

This is most apparent in the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, where the state never issued the names or amount of dead, a large amount of them children, because of ill built schools. Ai Weiwei and colleagues documented and published the names of nearly 5500: later, he would make an installation in an art gallery from 5500 child-less school bags. In Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry you get a real sense of the cat and mouse confrontation between artist and state until finally, he is arrested. Released after 81 days, he is fined 2.5m dollars, banned from meeting people and using the internet. It is moving to see ordinary Chinese people leave money at Ai Weiwei's door - the power of the artist indeed!

Obviously the artist could not be at the screening (having restricted movements imposed on him). However, he managed to arrange for fortune cookies to be handed out to the audience, each containing a unique message from the man himself. Mine read "You can delete the words but you cannot delete the facts" - and was immediately disseminated into the Twitterverse.

Where fiction really mattered was to be found, somewhat surprisingly, in the hands of ultra-glamorous star Angelina Jolie. The red carpet razzmatazz was very much in evidence when the "Brangelina" road show hit town: the captivated paparazzi clogged the entrance to such an extent they almost prevented me from seeing her film! The film in question, In The Land of Blood And Honey, doesn't pull any punches. It dramatically depicts the horrors inflicted on Muslim women in the Bosnian war, and while it does slide into melodrama at the end, the first half brings us face to face with the abuses suffered during the conflict.

Somewhat similarly, Filipino director Brillante Mendoza's Captive started off with a bang, throwing Isabelle Huppert into the hands of terrorists in a dramatisation of the 2001 incident which saw Muslim terrorist group Abu Sayyaf take numerous people hostage from a Filipino island resort. The first hour is compelling, disorientating filmmaking that manages to give a raw glimpse into the ordeal - but the film flags in the second half. I later discovered that the director had intended the film to be three hours: longer would definitely have been better, allowing the film to more fully explore the relationship between captors and captives as well as the tedium and terror of over a year in captivity.

Last but not least, documentary and fiction were satisfyingly brought together in the Taviani Brothers' Caesar Must Die, a compelling testament to the transformative power of art that went on to win the top prize at this year's festival. Prisoners in an Italian jail perform Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and through the process realise, and understand, more about their own condition. One prisoner observes sadly: "ever since I discovered art this cell has truly become a prison."

The 80-year-old veteran Brothers effortlessly merge drama, fiction, documentary and real life. Through immersion in the drama of Shakespeare, the prisoners discover more about themselves and their world. Similarly we, cinema goers, immerse ourselves in films and discover more about our world, and ourselves: life and art enjoy the most complex of relationships, and I wouldn't have it any other way.