2024 Winter Film Fests and Awards are Underway: Sundance, Rotterdam, Berlin
The big three winter film festivals — Sundance, Rotterdam and Berlin — are now showing the world what lies in store in top notch moviemaking, new moviemaking and some duds masquerading as art. And the Academy Award nominees are gearing up for their final sprint before Oscars on March 10 live on ABC 7e/4p. Noteworthy is the number of non-English language films nominated for Best Picture. This points to the Berlinale as a source of the next batch of Oscar noms in all categories.
Keep in touch with Sundance through Indiewire, with Rotterdam through Cineuropa and Berlin through me for now. During the festival and market the daily trades are supplied thanks to Penske Media Corp. who, btw, is now owner of SXSW (50%), American Pavilion in Cannes, Variety, Indiewire, Deadline Hollywood, The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard and Rolling Stone, et al., and often shares the auto racetracks through his IndyCar Series racing team Dragon Racing, with Saudi Arabia’s NEOM.
As the last year of their five year terms ends for Administrative Director Mariëtte Rissenbeek, Artistic Director Carlo Chatrian and European Film Market Director Dennis Ruh, they have their hands full. In my informal talk over coffee this week in Berlin with Dennis Ruh, some of the current events needing to be reined in this edition include incendiary protests for and against Democracy, Hamas, Ukraine and how such a high cultural event as the Berlinale seeks to contain free and civil discussion. Funding for a special place in the Berlinale to keep awareness of the Ukraine-Russia war is supplied by USAid. On the Israel/ Palestine front, a special “little house” will stand in Potsdamer Platz where an Arab-Palestinian woman and a Jewish-Israeli woman will be available to anyone to discuss their concerns. The pair is often seen in Germany’s many public schools fostering dialogue.
Next year 2025 will be filled with firsts and the reins for it all will be held by American-British Tricia Tuttle. Tricia Tuttle, the newly appointed Director of the Berlin International Film Festival, is currently Head of Directing Fiction at the UK’s prestigious National Film and TV School, but starting in April 2024 will be dealing with the German bureaucracy, the German language, raising money as the German government subsidies subside, an relocating as many of the usual festival cinemas will be closing including the Arsenal which will be moving to Moabit as the DffB (German film school) moves to Wedding; the Kinotek and Film Museum will also moving as their shared building in Potsdamer Platz undergoes renovation. The Martin Gropius Bau (MGB where the film market takes place) is also undergoing a renovation in 2025.
Officially, Mariëtte Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian post on the Berlinale.desite:
Film festivals provide a space for artistic expression and enable peaceful dialogue. They are places of encounter and exchange and contribute to international understanding. We believe that through the power of films and open discussions, we can help foster empathy, awareness, understanding — even and especially in painful times like these.
Our sympathy goes out to all the victims of the humanitarian crises in the Middle East and elsewhere. We want everyone’s suffering to be recognised and for our programme to be open to discussing different perspectives on the complexity of the world. We are also concerned to see that anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim resentment and hate speech are spreading in Germany and around the world. As a cultural institution, we take a firm stand against all forms of discrimination and are committed to intercultural understanding.
Meanwhile, Kristen Stewart, Adam Sandler, Lena Dunham, Sebastian Stan, Amanda Seyfried and Rooney Mara are among the talent heading to Berlin where many have films in competition, including Mara, whose La Cocina(ISA: Hanway) — where life in the kitchen of a NYC restaurant where cultures from all over the world blend during the lunchtime rush is depicted — is one of 20 competing alongside of Mati Diop’s Dahomey (ISA: Les Films du Losange) — charting the journey of 26 plundered royal treasures from the Kingdom of Dahomey exhibited in Paris, now being returned to Benin, voicing a new generation’s demands — and Hong Sangsoo’s A Traveler’s Needs(ISA: Finecut) starring Isabelle Huppert. Look for Cillian Murphy and Emily Watson in Small Things Like These (ISA: Filmnation); Gael García Bernal and Bérénice Bejo in Another End (ISA: Newen, A TF1 Group Company), Fabrice Luchini in L’Empire (ISA: Memento) of Bruno Dumont.
See full list of films A-Z or those in Competition (Wettbewerb in German) and Encounters, thus far. The entire program — including seasons and locations — will be on the 6th of February, published here.
See you in Berlin! February 15–25, 2024 at Potsdamer Platz.
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