As Europe and the US retreat from each other politically, European cinephiles are learning to cut back on Hollywood fare – with big US productions strikingly absent from this year’s Berlin film festival, which opens on Thursday.

In past years, the German capital’s Berlinale has opened with star-studded Oscar contenders such as the Coen brothers’ Hail, Caesar! or Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel. This year, the world’s biggest audience participation festival launches with the world premiere of a biopic of French jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt – focusing on his family’s persecution in Nazi-occupied Paris – by little-known first-timer Etienne Comar.

Meanwhile Oren Moverman’s family drama The Dinner, featuring Richard Gere, Steve Coogan, Rebecca Hall and Laura Linney, is the only US production to run in the festival’s competition, in which 18 films vie for the top prize – the Golden Bear.

The seven-member jury will be led by the Dutch director Paul Verhoeven, best known for Basic Instinct and Showgirls but lately winning much acclaim for controversial comedy drama Elle. The jury also includes US actor Maggie Gyllenhaal, Berlin-based Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson and Mexican actor-director Diego Luna, recently seen in Star Wars spin-off Rogue One.

Last year the Berlinale further cemented its reputation as a highly politically engaged festival by awarding its top prize to Fire at Sea. Gianfranco Rosi’s study of the island of Lampedusa, which has recently become the first port of call for many of Europe’s migrants, is a key contender for the best documentary Oscar later this month.

Ahead of the opening of the 67th festival, artistic director Dieter Kosslick reiterated this commitment, saying that amid “all the turmoil in the world” the festival was an “upbeat celebration” of people “who have courage, look ahead and want to change something”.

“A spectre is haunting us – not only in Europe,” said Kosslick. “Helplessness as a result of the obvious collapse of the big utopias and the disenchantment of the globalised world. Neither capitalism nor communism has kept its promise of making the world a more just place for people.”

One of many films that gives thought to the future of the continent is Tara, a poetic sci-fi that depicts a disintegrated Europe whose citizens are forced to flee.

In another disturbing take of an alternative Europe, German director Philipp Kadelbach’s BBC production SS-GB, which imagines a Britainconquered and occupied by the Nazis. The drama, which is on TV next month, stars Sam Riley as a detective torn between the SS, Scotland Yard and Britain’s resistance movement.

Meanwhile The Trial is an investigation by Askold Kurov into the political show trial of Ukrainian film director and Maidan activist Oleg Sentsov. In August 2015 Sentsov was sentenced to 20 years in a Siberian prison for terrorism; the film is supported by a campaign, backed by directors such as Ken Loach and Pedro Almodovar which attempts to highlight his plight.

Pokot, the new film from Oscar-nominated Polish director Agnieszka Holland, is based on the novel Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, who has received death threats for questioning Poland’s record on tolerance towards its Jewish citizens. Acclaimed Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki will present The Other Side of Hope, about a Syrian refugee who winds up in Helsinki.

Biopics of key European artists and thinkers also loom large: alongside the portrait of Reinhardt and a documentary about German artist Joseph Beuys are Stanley Tucci’s Final Portrait, about the life of sculpture Alberto Giacometti, played by Geoffrey Rush. Meanwhile, The Young Karl Marx, by Haitian director and activist Raoul Peck, focuses on the friendship between Marx and Friedrich Engels.

The Brits are represented by T2 Trainspotting, which receives its European premiere, Viceroy’s House, Gurinder Chadha’s depiction of life below stairs at the Mountbattens’ residence in 1947 India, and The Party, Sally Potter’s comedy/drama starring Timothy Spall, Kristin Scott Thomas and Patricia Clarkson.

Catherine Deneuve and Penelope Cruz also have films screening at the festival, ensuring some glamour amongst the meatier fare. Kosslick has been criticised in previous years for dumbing down the festival by inviting films like 50 Shades of Grey to screen out of competition; this year he was keen to emphasise the scant number of popcorn films on offer.

Two more mainstream films do screen out of competition this year, however: The Lost City of Z, an adventure starring Charlie Hunnam and Sienna Miller and directed by US auteur James Gray, and Logan, Hugh Jackman’s final outing in the Wolverine franchise. That film sees the hairy superhero attempting to hide out on the Mexican border, but being thwarted after the arrival of a young mutant, pursued by dark forces.

“This is how things might end up if we don’t succeed in restraining the populists,” said Kosslick.