Berlinale Talents leads by example with its theme for this year, “Common Tongues – Speaking Out in the Language of Cinema,” promoting diversity, tolerance, and unity within the film industry. The program features 14 major public talks and numerous other events for the 202 invited talents, covering a wide spectrum of cinematic disciplines and cultures. Emphasizing the importance of language and understanding, the program encourages dialogue among internationally acclaimed guests and among the talents themselves.
Berlinale directors Mati Diop and Agnes Lisa Wegner engage in a discussion titled “Speaking Out: Film as a Culture of Memory,” focusing on the cinematic illumination of long-suppressed colonial crimes in Africa, using the voices of those impacted.
Meanwhile, documentary directors Oksana Karpovych and Roman Bondarchuk, along with Kyiv Critics’ Week co-curator Daria Badior, convene at the Forum to explore “Collecting Voices: Ukrainian Cinema Confronting the Unspeakable,” delving into the documenting of voices and the challenge of preserving creativity amidst times of conflict.
Martin Scorsese, awarded this year’s Honorary Golden Bear, is welcomed to Berlinale Talents’ by Joanna Hogg, who will be talking to the acclaimed director about his life’s work. Constantly exploring and relentlessly searching for the diversity of humanity also distinguishes director Tsai Ming-liang (Abiding Nowhere, Berlinale Special).
“Alternative Narratives: Art as Articulated by Tsai Ming-liang”, will be about his films, VR experiences and installations. This talk and the in-depth discussion with Abderrahmane Sissako (Black Tea, Competition), one of the world’s most renowned filmmakers from sub-Saharan Africa, will not be held in English and instead will be translated live in the auditorium for a greater linguistic diversity.
Audiences who want to delve deeper into the world of stories – whether true or fictional – can this year appreciate around 70 Berlinale films made with the involvement of Talents alumni. Many are invited to Berlinale Talents as guests, such as alumnae Nora Fingscheidt (The Outrun, Panorama), Nele Wohlatz (Sleep With Your Eyes Open, Encounters) and Meryam Joobeur (Who Do I Belong To, Competition), who will explore how they give their characters life in their writing process in “Words of Mouth: A Film Character’s Journey in Writing”.
Prominent representatives of the US-independent cinema will shed light on role development with actors: the director brothers Nathan and David Zellner (Sasquatch Sunset, Berlinale Special) with a humorous lecture on the language of the Big Foot („Bros in the Woods: Learning to Talk with the Zellners“); Ira Sachs (Passages, Jury member for Generation) and Eliza Hittman (Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Jury member for the GWFF Award) from very personal perspectives about their work as directors in sensitive moments in “I Hear You: For a Language of Trust on Set”.
The Peaches’ and her costume and hair designer Charlie Le Mindu will be exploring body, clothing and everything in between in “Body Languages: Peaches, Hair and Her Costumes”. And the “Teddy Talents Talks: What’s Seen but not Said”, which are developing into a successful format of the queer Berlinale, will once again be visionary, this time with the participation of performance artist Bishop Black, among many others.
This year’s President of the International Jury, Lupita Nyong’o, belongs to the culturally most influential women in Africa and is also one of the most renowned actors in the world. For the Berlinale Talents audience, she and her colleagues will swap their cinema seats for the big stage for “Common Tongues: The International Jury”.
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