Competition | Berlinale Shorts | Panorama

Mar 28, 2019
Berlinale 2020: Carlo Chatrian and Mariette Rissenbeek Announce the First Developments

Selection committee appointed / new heads for Panorama and Berlinale Shorts / Outlook onto 70th anniversary

Carlo Chatrian as Artistic Director and Mariette Rissenbeek as Executive Director will officially take office on June 1, 2019. The future director duo have already been in contact with festival sections, initiatives and departments for some time now, learning about workflows and structures, and had the opportunity to gain further insights on location at the festival in February. They started working in their offices at Potsdamer Platz in March and can now present a first look onto the 2020 Berlinale.

“We have different tasks, but the same goal: to successfully lead the festival into the future! We inherit a festival which is not only recognised as one of the biggest in the world but also plays a significant role in the international film industry; we are aware of the huge task we have in front of us and thank long-time Festival Director Dieter Kosslick for the work that he has done. We wish to maintain the Berlinale as an audience festival and as a festival for Berlin and we are looking forward to embracing the new challenges and opportunities that cinema in 21st century offers,” said the director duo.

“My focus is on financing and organisational as well as communication structures on the one hand and developing new strategies and the respective concepts on the other. This includes the support of the industry activities European Film Market, Berlinale Co-Production Market, Berlinale Talents and World Cinema Fund as well as cooperation with our partners in fields other than programming,” adds Executive Director Mariette Rissenbeek. “I’m responsible for the festival’s artistic profile. In looking after the programming work, supported by the selection committee, I wish to carve out the artistic shape of the entire festival programme,” says artistic director Carlo Chatrian.

New selection committee

Carlo Chatrian has appointed a seven-member selection committee. Along with being the head of programming, Mark Peranson will chair the selection committee.

Mark Peranson / Head of Programming
Mark Peranson is a programmer, writer, and filmmaker originally from Toronto, Canada. He was Head of Programming for the Locarno Festival from 2013 to 2018, and was a member of the selection committee from 2010 to 2012. From 2001 to 2018 he was a programming associate for the Vancouver International Film Festival. Peranson is also the founder, editor, and publisher of “Cinema Scope” magazine. His films as a director include Waiting for Sancho (2008) and La última película (2013). As an actor he participated in a number of films, including Albert Serra’s Birdsong (2008) and Hong Sang-soo’s On the Beach at Night Alone (2017).

Lorenzo Esposito
Lorenzo Esposito is a programmer and curator. From 2013 to 2018 he was a member of the selection committee of the Locarno Festival. Previously he worked on programmes for the film festivals in Venice (2001), Turin (from 2002 to 2006) and the Rome Film Fest in 2007. He currently is an international consultant on the Mediterranean to Cinema du réel, on Italy to the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, and is the editor of the online cinema magazine “Film Parlato”. In 2003 he began working for “Fuori Orario”, a programme broadcast by the Italian public TV channel Rai 3, curating shows about films and directors.

Sergio Fant
Sergio Fant is a German-based Italian film programmer. After graduating in film studies and training at Cineteca di Bologna, he went on to conceive and curate programmes for, among others, Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, the Rome Film Fest and the Venice International Film Festival, where in 2010 and 2011 he was in charge of the short films selection. He has been the Trento Film Festival’s Head of Programming since 2012. In 2013 he joined the Locarno Festival as programmer, holding the position until 2018. In 2019, he co-curated the 18th DocPoint - Helsinki Documentary Film Festival. He writes a column for the Italian weekly “Internazionale”.

Aurélie Godet
Aurélie Godet was the Deputy Director of UniFrance’s New York office from 2006 to 2010. After relocating to Europe, she worked as a consultant for production companies and wrote for several publications, including “Cahiers du Cinéma”. In 2013, she joined the selection committee of the Locarno Festival, where she remained a programmer for six years. She also contributed to the 3 Continents and La Roche-sur-Yon film festivals. In 2019, she co-founded “Parenting at Film Fests”, a collective of film professionals aiming for a better work-life balance. She is a member of the advisory committee at Arte France Cinéma.

Paz Lázaro
Paz Lázaro was director and curator of the Berlinale Panorama section in 2018 and 2019 and has been programme manager of the section since 2006. In 2007 she became a member of the selection committee for the Competition and is also part of the selection committee for Berlinale Series. From 2004 to 2007 she was a member of the curatorial teams of the Interfilm Berlin short film festival. Before her career as a curator, she worked in film and theatre production. As a script and editing consultant, she has collaborated with the ICAA in Spain, ICAU in Uruguay and FOPROCINE in Mexico for IMCINE, the Match Factory, as well as Ibermedia.

Verena von Stackelberg
Verena von Stackelberg studied media arts in Barcelona and film and photography in London; since 2003 she has been working as a film curator, programmer and in distribution in London, Cambridge and Berlin. She has worked for companies such as Curzon Cinemas, Filmgalerie 451, the Berlin International Film Festival, and the Cambridge Film Festival, and is currently the film programmer at Soho House in Berlin. She is the founder and managing director of Wolf Kino, a Berlin cinema that opened in 2017, which includes a café-bar, a gallery space and the post-production studio Planemo as well as classic screening rooms.

Barbara Wurm
Barbara Wurm is an author and curator. She studied Slavistics, among other subjects, in Vienna, Moscow, Munich and Leipzig. She has worked on the selection committees of DOK Leipzig and the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, is currently active at the goEast Film Festival, and contributes to the programming of various film festivals and cinematheques. An expert on Eastern European film, she wrote her dissertation on Soviet educational film and has co-edited books on various subjects, including Dziga Vertov. Her research and educational focuses at Humboldt University in Berlin are Eastern European cultural studies, as well as film theory and history. She contributes to newspapers and magazines as a film critic.

New heads for Panorama and Berlinale Shorts

Michael Stütz will assume leadership of Panorama. To date, Michael Stütz was programme manager and curator of Panorama together with departing section head Paz Lázaro, who will now be joining the selection committee.

Michael Stütz
From 2018 to 2019, Michael Stütz was curator and programme manager of the Berlinale Panorama section, in which he has been working since 2006. He is also coordinator of the TEDDY AWARD, the queer film prize at the Berlinale. Alongside his work at Panorama, he has been involved in numerous other festivals as guest speaker, curator and jury member, including at the Guadalajara International Film Festival, Crossing Europe, Mix Brazil and the Tel Aviv International LGBT Film Festival. From 2011 to 2017, Michael Stütz was co-director of the XPOSED International Queer Film Festival in Berlin where he was responsible for curating numerous programmes.

Maike Mia Höhne, long-time section head of Berlinale Shorts, will vacate her position following her appointment as artistic director of the Hamburg International Short Film Festival. Anna Henckel-Donnersmarck will be the new head of Berlinale Shorts starting on June 1st.

Anna Henckel-Donnersmarck
Anna Henckel-Donnersmarck has been a film programmer, moderator and juror at film festivals for the past 20 years, e.g. at Berlinale Shorts, Pictoplasma, Stuttgarter Filmwinter and Kasseler Dokfest. Her focus is on short films. She also designs and realises video installations for exhibitions, performances and concerts such as GRIMMWELT Kassel, Humboldt Lab, Bauhaus-Archiv, Schauspiel Köln, The Wooster Group NYC, Berliner Philharmoniker, and opera houses in Berlin, Frankfurt and Zurich. She studied at the Film Academy Baden-Württemberg and teaches film theory and video art at various art colleges.

The existing section structure will remain unchanged for the time being, with the concept for Berlinale Special currently in revision. Further programming changes will be decided on in the coming weeks. There will be no changes in the heads of the remaining sections in 2020: Generation (Maryanne Redpath), Perspektive Deutsches Kino (Linda Söffker), Retrospective (Rainer Rother). Information on the new section head of Forum will be released soon by Arsenal - Institute for Film and Video Art. Forum Expanded will continue to be managed by Stefanie Schulte Strathaus.

The 70th Berlinale in 2020

The 70th anniversary festival will connect the Berlinale more strongly with the city. "We would like to celebrate the festival's grand history by moving the cinema and the festival beyond its traditional locations. This idea also reflects the fact that moving images are ubiquitous in today's world, and have become a tool for many art forms. We want to create a small but significant collection of places in the city - an alternative map that brings the festival into contact with Berliners and visitors who aren't yet familiar with it", says the duo.