Berlin co-heads dissect 2023 competition, US presence, absence of Arab and African contenders and festivals as lifeline for Indie cinema

Berlinale Artistic Director Carlo Chatrian and Executive Director Mariëtte Rissenbeck announced on Monday the lineups of the International Competition and Encounters for the 73rd edition of the festival, which runs from February 16 to 26.

“It’s a pretty eclectic selection,” Chatrian said at the press conference in Berlin on Monday morning. “You will see that we have tried to include as many genres and film forms as possible.

The international competition consists of 18 titles, 15 of which are world premieres, in 19 different countries. Encounters, the Berlinale counterpart to Un Certain Regard, which started in 2020, will include 16 films.

Chatrian maintains his penchant for mixing established names, including Philippe Garrel (The group), Margarete von Trotta (Ingeborg Bachmann – Journey into the Desert) and Christian Petzold (A fire), with newcomers such as Celine Song and Giacomo Abbruzzese each celebrating premieres past lives and disco boy.

European productions dominate, but Asia is represented The shadowless tower by the Chinese Lu Zhang, who was a regular guest at the Berlinale in 2019 Fukuokaand Japanese animation master Makoto Shinkai suzumethe first anime in the competition in two decades.

Australia is also well represented with the detective story by indigenous filmmaker Ivan Sen limbo, with Simon Baker (who was there the Berlinale with Higher level in 2020) and that of Rolf de Heer The survival of kindness.

Previous Berlinale announcements include Kristen Stewart as Jury President, Steven Spielberg’s Honorary Golden Bear and Rebecca Miller’s she came to me for the opening film raised expectations that the festival would rival Cannes or Venice by bagging a handful of major American titles.

In the end, it stuck to its indie and art house guns, opting for buzzy North American indie titles like Song’s past lives and the American set by South African director John Trengove manodramawith Jesse Eisenberg, Adrien Brody and Odessa Young.

Deadline spoke with Chatrian and Rissenbeck after the press conference to analyze the series.

MEETING: Based on the previous announcements, we thought there might be some American studio titles in the main international competition.

Carlo Chatrian: In Encounters there is a film by Universal, The adults. We included it in Encounters because we still see Dustin Guy Defa as a new, emerging voice in the film. We have two American film productions in competition, both by young filmmakers.

As you have seen, from our retrospective (titled Young at Heart – Coming of Age at the Movies) to our Jury President (Kristen Stewart), we have a youth focus this year, and we need to be consistent in our choices. I think we have a role to play in that.

Celine songs past lives premiered at Sundance a few days ago and all the reviews are great. Four years ago John was in Trengove at the festival (meet The wound). He returns in a bold new film with a huge cast, Jesse Eisenberg, Adrien Brody and Odessa Young. We have a third English-language Canadian production, blackberry by Matt Johnson. Maybe they are not the kind of movies you expected, but to me they are good examples of the fresh, vibrant, strong North American titles. manodrama is produced by one of the most interesting young companies in the US (Riley Keough Gina Gammell’s Felix Culpa in the US).

MEETING: They also announced a special screening of Sean Penn’s documentary Superpower, directed by Aaron Kaufman, about his trip to Ukraine and his meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the early days of the Russian invasion last February. There must have been a lot of competition for this film from other festivals, why do you think the filmmakers decided to debut it at the Berlinale?

Chatrian: You should ask her. This is a project we were informed about at an early stage last spring. We naturally followed the example, because it is very close here (Berlin), there are not only geographically many refugees in Germany. Not only that, I think the offer we made was good for them. It is also timely, as the festival coincides with the one-year anniversary of the start of the war.

MEETING: It is unlikely, but think that Zelenskyy can come to Berlin for thate Screening?

RISSENBECK: I imagine he is currently struggling to travel with the situation. It’s too dangerous. I don’t think he will be here in person. I don’t see how he would manage it.

MEETING: Do you already know when it will be shown?

Chatrian: At the beginning of the festival.

MEETING: You said that this year you will use the yellow and blue colors of Ukraine at the festival. Will it be the whole festival?

RISSENBECK: No, it’s just for our traditional pen in the shape of a Berlinale bear. We have a different color every year. This is the first time we have used the national color of another country. There will be many more events related to Ukraine at the European Film Market and Festival.

MEETING: You were asked about Steven Spielberg’s presence at the press conference. They seemed to imply that he would only be at the festival for a very short time, perhaps 48 hours.

RISSENBECK: Something like that I think he’s on a longer journey. He will be in different places and he has very little time.

MEETING: In addition to a press conference, is he also going to give a master class?

Chatrian: It’s just the press conference and awards ceremony tonight.

MEETING: Coming back to the competition program, the Berlinale has a long tradition of welcoming Arab cinema, so it is surprising that no titles from the Arab world were included in the competition. Carlo, you said in the press conference that this is a somewhat “sensitive” subject for you, can you explain that?

Chatrian: I said this is one of the items missing from the main list, not only Arab films but also African films. We must ensure that the films we select are suitable for the competition. This year we have a very strong presence from Asia, Australia. That’s the nice thing about the choice, that you have a different focus every year. We do not make choices with the preconceived notion of having a bit of this or that, but by responding to the films. I’m sure we’ll have them again next year, although unfortunately it’s not that easy to find Arab films competing at the big festivals.

MEETING: As a result, the lack of African films in the competition is surprising, as the Berlinale is now linked to Africa through initiatives by the European Film Market and the World Film Fund, as well as through channels about filmmakers and projects from this continent.

Chatrian: Afrikaans films are fairly well represented this year, but not in the competition. We have great films in Panorama: The cinema graveyard (by Guinean director Thierno Souleymane); Sir, It’s a very strong (Burkina Faso set) western and we have it All the colors in the world are between black and white from Nigeria.

You could see these films and say that some of them should have been in competition. We talked about it and in the end I felt they didn’t go well together. Choosing a film solely based on its country of origin is not always the best solution. But I know that more needs to be done to achieve better representation. We do not work with quotas. It’s important to me that we don’t put numbers on the films, but we recognize that we need to work together to better represent all the colors and palettes that films have to offer.

MEETING: This is the first purely physical Berlinale since 2020 after it was scaled back due to the Covid-19 pandemic. There is only one pandemic-themed film in the main series, The Walls of Bergamo in Encounters. Did you consciously decide against films with a pandemic theme and what made this film stand out in particular?

Chatrian: We didn’t get that much this year, even though we were flooded the last two years. To tell you the truth, this film sparked quite a lively discussion in my team when some of the programmers asked why we had to redo it.

It was very, very tough in Northern Italy. You really get the feeling of total disorientation. The beauty of the film is that it not only immerses us in what happened in 2020, but also explores how it is possible to overcome this feeling. In that sense, the film is heartbreaking, seeing people who have survived at various stages as they return to normal life. As you can see, doctors have to deal with it too. For me it is very touching and important to be shown, especially now that we have some distance.

MEETING: Speaking more generally about the film festivals, you mentioned at the press conference that they are now the key way for filmmakers, even established filmmakers, to connect with audiences. Can you explain that?

I think everyone can see that festivals have become more and more relevant for independent films, not just the smaller ones. Any independent film without a festival will drastically reduce its reach.

The festival has probably become the best support for independent films. It’s good to give space to new voices and we did a good job this year. But we also decided on the film by Margarethe von Trotta. She is an established filmmaker, she doesn’t need a festival, but her film does. It is the only place where films can be viewed by professionals from around the world, rated, attracted to distributors and then hopefully sold and then watched elsewhere.

MEETING: The Berlinale awards the prize for gender neutral acting for the third time. So far, only women have won the awards. Did it work out the way you envisioned and do you still think it was the right move?

RISSENBECK: We were the first festival to do that, so it got a lot of attention, and then a number of other festivals made the same decision. I think it was the right move. As you mentioned, women have been the winners so far. It shows that you don’t have to think that there should be a separate competition between women and men when it comes to acting. We both believe it was absolutely right.

MEETING: So you didn’t criticize that only women won?

Chatrian: This will only run during the 2021 and 2022 editions, so it’s still a bit early to see a trend. Let’s see how it goes with a female jury president this year. But I’m sure women want best actor to win. When Maria Eggert won for i am you are a man, everyone thought her performance was a great achievement. I’m not worried about that and other festivals like San Sebastián and Locarno have followed suit. I think we are all on our way there.

MEETING: Today’s announcement brings the total number of feature films announced to date to 293. Are you planning any final additions, or is that it?

Chatrian: We are happy with this series. But you never know. There might be a new title or two, but there won’t be a whole lot of new movies.