PRESS RELEASE: BERLINALE TALENTS 65TH BERLINALE

Cracking open and reconfiguring notions of spatiality will be high on the agenda for this year’s edition of Berlinale Talents. Under the focus “2015: A Space Discovery”, the summit will host a star-studded cast of professionals to convene from February 7 to 12 at the HAU Hebbel am Ufer theatres in Berlin to discuss and work with the 300 invited Talents and public audiences.

To kick it all off, president of the International Jury Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan) and fellow jurors get the topic rolling with an in-depth discussion on how they have sculpted space in their own films. The panel “Road, Movie: Films in Motion” brings German director Sebastian Schipper from the Competition programme (Victoria) together with Walter Salles (On the Road). Both will keep track of their protagonists’ cinematic journeys through space and time. Bong Joon-Ho (Snowpiercer) and producer Lorna Tee (Postcards from the Zoo) talk about movies crossing the border from their local birthplaces to international audiences. Legendary German auteur Wim Wenders (Paris, Texas), this year's Berlinale Homage subject, takes the stage in a joint event with the Deutsche Kinemathek - Museum für Film und Fernsehen to shed light on his career which has spanned a multitude of genres, formats and continents. Director Ursula Meier (Sister), who presents a short film at this year’s Generation programme, grants insight into her relationships on set with actors of all ages.

In cooperation with Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, German director Andreas Dresen, together with his longtime screenwriter Wolfgang Kohlhaase and best-selling book author Clemens Meyer, explores the short period 25 years ago when space in East Germany seemed unlimited and that is the setting for his Competition film As We Were Dreaming. Oscar®, Golden Globe and Grammy-winning composer Howard Shore (Maps To The Stars, The Lord of the Rings) will be on hand in Berlin to elaborate how a film's score and sound create spaces in which stories unfold.

Movie theaters from Beirut to Cairo, spaces for exhibiting films and bustling hubs of alternative culture, are in the limelight during the panel “Crossroads to Culture - Cinema(s) in the Arab World”. Also with focus on the Arab countries, Berlinale Talents will host the award ceremony for the “Film Prize of the Robert Bosch Stiftung for International Cooperation”. A truly intercontinental panel in cooperation with Berlinale NATIVe and the Federal Foreign Office delves into the cultural spaces of Africa, Latin America and India, in search of the roots of local storytelling traditions.

A discussion between director Joanna Hogg (Exhibition) and architect Matthias Sauerbruch explores how a house can become an actual character in a film and dictate human relations. Film choreographer Francesca Jaynes and puppeteer Mikey Brett (War Horse), both having worked with Sandra Bullock and George Clooney in Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity, will tackle how actors create movement in spaces beyond limits.

Several panels will focus on the power of film and filmmakers to influence and inspire social and political changes. Academy Award nominee Laura Poitras (Citizenfour) joins Berlinale Talents for an interactive webcam session on her role as a documentarist, while Joshua Oppenheimer (The Act of Killing) and Marcel Ophüls (The Memory of Justice) discuss the chosen ways of their films to look back into history and preserve cinematic spaces of remembrance. Together with Andy Bichlbaum and Mika Bonanno, better known as the activist duo The Yes Men, director Laura Nix (The Yes Men are Revolting) will discuss how guerrilla filmmaking and the weapons of humour can help hacking public and private spheres.

In partnership with Canon, Berlinale Talents offers an array of activities. Acclaimed DoP Peter Zeitlinger (Queen Of The Desert) will give a masterclass on his multiple collaborations with directors Werner Herzog and Ulrich Seidl. A two-day lightening and grading workshop with DoP Franz Lustig (How I Live) will focus on creating and defining cinematic space with the power of light. DoP Stefan Ciupek (127 Hours) and colourist Dirk Meier (Antichrist) will present their “Survival Guide to Digital Workflows”, discussing substantial details of working with the latest technologies.

More information at: www.berlinale-talents.de

Berlinale Talents is an initiative of the Berlin International Film Festival, a business division of the Kulturveranstaltungen des Bundes in Berlin GmbH, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, in cooperation with Creative Europe MEDIA, a programme of the European Union, Robert Bosch Stiftung, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg and Canon.