Jan 30, 2023
Berlinale Camera 2023: Tribute to Caroline Champetier

Since 1986, the Berlinale has awarded the Berlinale Camera to honour personalities and institutions who have made a special contribution to filmmaking and with whom the festival feels closely connected. In this manner, the Berlinale expresses its appreciation towards those who have become friends and supporters of the festival.

At the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival, the cinematographer Caroline Champetier will be honoured with the Berlinale Camera.

The Executive Director Mariëtte Rissenbeek and the Artistic Director Carlo Chatrian on awarding Caroline Champetier: “With her extraordinary body of work, Caroline Champetier has shaped the vision of many unique filmmakers, creating a bridge between the Nouvelle Vague and the younger generation. More recently her collaboration with Leos Carax has shown new digital potential. Among the many films we could name, the ones she did with Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet are very dear to us these days.”

The Berlinale Camera will be awarded to Caroline Champetier on Thursday, February 23, at 2.45 pm in the Haus der Berliner Festspiele. Champetier has chosen Anne Fontaine's The Innocents, for which she did the cinematography. The film will be screened after the Award Ceremony as part of Berlinale Special.

Caroline Champetier can count more than one hundred films in her career as a cinematographer, spanning from 1979 to present. She started out with François Truffaut, Jacques Rivette and Chantal Akerman with Toute une nuit and shot several short and feature films with Jean-Luc Godard. Since then she has worked with the great stars of French cinema among them Xavier Beauvois, Leos Carax, Arnaud Desplechin, Jacques Doillon, Anne Fontaine, Philippe Garrel, Benoît Jacquot, Claude Lanzmann as well as international filmmakers such as Margarethe von Trotta, Wang Chao, Amos Gitai and Nobuhiro Suwa.

Known for her talent beyond borders, Caroline Champetier has garnered numerous awards, notably the César for Best Cinematography, the Gianni di Venanzo Prize for Of Gods and Men by Xavier Beauvois in 2011, and the Silver Frog at Camerimage 2012 for Holy Motors. She was nominated four more times at the César for Holy Motors (2012), Les Innocentes (2016), Les Gardiennes (2017) and Annette (2021). The latter earned her the Lumière Award in 2022.

Caroline Champetier’s most recent work includes Fyzal Boulifa’s The Damned Don’t Cry, shown at the Venice Film Festival 2022 and she has just completed filming Cliquot, with Haley Bennett, Sam Riley and Tom Sturridge.

The Berlinale Camera consists of 128 individual parts and depicts a real film camera. It is manufactured by the Düsseldorf goldsmith and artist Georg Hornemann.

Press Office
January 30, 2023