59th Berlin International Film Festival

February 5 – 15, 2009

“‘A festival against the crisis’ is how Dieter Kosslick referred to the 59th Berlinale. It has become a film festival of superlatives, which, with 270,000 tickets sold, was able to announce new record audience figures.” – Blickpunkt Film

Finally, the theme played an important role in the Culinary Cinema series: Food, Inc. by Robert Kenner took a critical look at the machinations of global food companies, filling up the Friedrichstadt-Palast, which for the first time served as a new venue for opulent Berlinale Special gala events and Competition repeat screenings.

Record audiences – thanks to new venues

Apart for the Cinema Paris in the Institut Français as an additional new cinema for the Berlinale Special section, and the Cosima, in which the long-term documentary Berlin – Ecke Bundesplatz was presented, the success of the Friedrichstadt-Palast – now the largest venue of the festival with its 1,750 seats – played a significant role in the enormous boost in ticket sales compared to the previous year. (274,112 tickets versus 240,098 in 2008). At the same time, the sales figures are of course an indicator of the uninterrupted pull the Berlinale continues to have on audiences: “The festival [...] makes a case for going to the cinema and, year after year, that case is heard” (FAZ).

Appearances by numerous stars also contributed to the attractiveness of the festival. The Berlinale Special alone offered passionate film fans direct visual contact to four greats of the big screen. German celebrities such as Ulrich Tukur (John Rabe), Heike Makatsch (Hilde) and Julia Jentsch and Sebastian Koch, whose Effi Briest premiere was even attended by German chancellor Angela Merkel, stood alongside renowned international film greats like Hong Kong star Aaron Kwok (Empire Of Silver) and Jeff Goldblum and director Paul Schrader (Adam Resurrected).

As an expression of a person’s special connection to the festival, three Berlinale Cameras were presented in 2009. The awards for French director Claude Chabrol (Bellamy) and German producer Günter Rohrbach (Effi Briest) were announced in advance, while the honour for the 100-year-old, still active Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira (Singularidades de uma rapariga loura) was a fantastic surprise.

“An enthusiastic, one-of-a-kind audience”

As usual, most of the international film celebrities like Demi Moore, Willem Dafoe, Clive Owen and Keanu Reeves were seen on the Red Carpet of the Competition. The encounter with the Berlin public once again highlighted a decisive difference to other big film festivals: “Berlin, by comparison, means direct contact to the audience, the cinemagoers. Cheering kids who were celebrating the appearance of the “Harry Potter” star outside the Babylon, tumultuous scenes surrounding Kate Winslet, Renée Zellweger, Michelle Pfeiffer, who, despite icy temperatures, took time to give autographs, international stars like Brenda Blethyn and Stephen Frears came to the cinema lobby and talked to members of the audience after the screening. When the international stars keep saying they love coming to Berlin, it’s not just because of the city’s hipness, the clubs, the galleries, but also this immediate contact to an enthusiastic, one-of-a-kind audience” (Tagesspiegel).

And yet as much as the Berlin audience was enthusiastic, no single favourite Competition film materialized, creating a noticeable tension in the air before the awards ceremony. For many observers it was clear from the beginning that the “award ceremony of a Berlinale jury chaired by Tilda Swinton would be something special. […] From among the competition films, which couldn’t be more different, the most unconventional films emerged as winners” (Stern). With La teta asustada, a cinematic approach to the traumatic events of Peru’s recent history, the Golden Bear went to the second feature film by young director Claudia Llosa which was made with the support of the World Cinema Fund. The Grand Prix of the Jury was presented ex aequo to the precisely staged and impressive second and first works Alle anderen by Maren Ade and Gigante by Adrián Biniez, who also received the award for the best debut film and the Alfred Bauer Prize ex aequo with Andrzej Wajda’s Tatarak.