The Berlin Film Festival will take place between 13-23.2. The festival has a new head, Tricia Tuttle, and two new venues, but Tuttle doesn’t seem to be planning bigger changes in the program and structure for now. The Teddy Award remains as well as the neighborhood cinema events and the festival sections. She also remained tight-lipped in our interview, which Dieter Oßwald conducted in mid-December – perhaps because she does not want to reveal too much yet.
Even after the relocation of Arsenal Kino, the center of the Berlinale continues to be Potsdamer Platz, there are even two new venues, which means that you have to go to this dead zone of urban architecture this year too. A cinema is being built in Bluemax Theater, this is where the Encounters section will take place. A meeting place and lounge, the HUB75, will also be built near the Berlinale Palace. The first films have already been announced: the opening film of the festival is Tom Tykwer’s DAS LICHT, in which the everyday life of a German middle-class family is thrown into disarray by the arrival of a Syrian housekeeper. The first Panorama titles include Denis Coté's PAUL, Ira Sachs' PETER HUJAR'S DAY and the animation LESBIAN SPACE PRINCESS by Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese.

The retrospective will show German genre films from the 1970s, including many long-running genre favorites such as Roland Klick's DEADLOCK, Klaus Lemke's ROCKER and Uli Lommel's THE TENDERNESS OF THE WOLVES, but also Hans W. Geissendörfer's vampire film JONATHAN and Rudolf Thome's thriller FREMDE STADT. The jury president will be Todd Haynes (MAY DECEMBER, CAROL, VELVET GOLDMINE).


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