2021 | Berlinale Talents

Conquering Dreamlands: Berlinale Talents on demand

From March 1 to 5, Berlinale Talents offered a host of events featuring top-class guests. The 2021 Talents theme of “DREAMS” floated through each of the talks, panels and workshops.

Dream On: New Cinema, New Voices!

Celebrating the 10th anniversary of her media and narrative change powerhouse ARRAY, we've joined forces with Ava DuVernay to gather Berlinale and Talents alumni and their work from inside Indigenous communities. After a recorded intro talk by Ava, Elle-Máijá, Heperi and Takeshi engage in a live conversation about their perspectives and practises as storytellers and visionaries of a new cinema.
With: Ava DuVernay, Takeshi Fukunaga, Heperi Mita, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers; Djamila Grandits (Moderation)

Berlinale Talents on Demand

Dream On: Kirsten Johnson

Non-fiction cinematographer Kirsten Johnson has taken us into the nightmarish depths of the Snowden affair (Citizenfour). In Dick Johnson is Dead, the camera is devoted to her father, whose very real dementia inspires Kirsten to stage his multiple fake deaths. In this very special session, she walks us through the detailed dreams that surface in the depths of her documentarian mind.
With: Kirsten Johnson

Berlinale Talents on Demand

Non-Scripted: Can We Write Cinema?

From lengthy scripts to wordy funding applications, words are often crucial to convincing others to make a film. This session invites us to consider the delicate balancing act between the written and what's really seen in cinema. With excerpts from films supported by the World Cinema Fund, script editor, cinematographer and director ask each other whether a story in cinema is what we know or can tell, and what we really experience.
With: Josée Deshaies, Joana Hadjithomas, Franz Rodenkirchen; Vincenzo Bugno (Moderation)

Berlinale Talents on Demand

In Contact: The Politics of Moving Bodies

The incursion of the digital reality into our physical lives pushes us to rethink the relationship to our bodies and the encounters with those of others. In this session, director and actor Welket Bungué (Berlin Alexanderplatz) whose latest work Mudança is part of this year's Forum Expanded, interacts with Natascha Noack, traveller between the realms of dance, movement, language and film.
With: Welket Bungué; Natascha Noack (Moderation)

Berlinale Talents on demand

Ears Wide Open: A Global Sound Journey

Dim the lights, this session requires one of our senses above all: your ears. A much-needed chance to give your video-call-worn eyes a break, here is an opportunity to embark on an acoustic journey exclusively composed for this session of live field recordings from more than 60 cities and rural spaces all across the globe. Here, listening is no passive act, but an experience of contingency, wrapped in a dreamlike state.
With: Rana Eid, Tim Nielsen, Alastair Sirkett

Berlinale Talents on demand

Dream Team: Intercontinental Co-Production

Lê Bảo's first feature Vị (Berlinale Encounters 2021) tells the story of a time-limited utopia, as the film's characters retreat into an old hotel to build a new world for themselves. Three of the film's producers reconvene to walk us through the production story behind the film, the advantages and challenges of international co-production and how to build the dream team for that.
With: Marie Dubas, Thao Dong, Weijie Lai; Dorothee Wenner (Moderation)

Berlinale Talents on demand

Good Bye, Film Prize!

The Robert Bosch Stiftung has been a prime partner of Berlinale Talents for more than a decade, connecting and supporting filmmakers in Germany and the Arab World in their creative ambitions. This special goodbye will see the winners of the 2021 Film Prize announced and presented on screen.
With: Frank W. Albers (Moderation), Florian Weghorn (Moderation)

Berlinale Talents on demand

Dream On: Golden Bear Jury

All former Golden Bear winners, the International Jury of this 71st edition of the Berlinale joins the festival's Artistic Director Carlo Chatrian in conversation. Rather than focus on their duties as jurors however, this is an invitation to these celebrated filmmakers to address the dreamlike dimensions of their work, whether poetic or political.
With: Ildikó Enyedi, Nadav Lapid, Adina Pintilie, Mohammad Rasoulof, Jasmila Žbanić; Carlo Chatrian (Moderation)

Berlinale Talents on demand

Dreaming of Nothing: Apichatpong Weerasethakul

When we dream, we go to the movies, according to Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Cemetery of Splendour). Taking time off from the busy work on his newest film Memoria, Apichatpong joins us to engage in a collective dream about "nothing," an ultimate challenge for many of us who have been trained to accumulate - things, memories, films, knowledge.
With: Apichatpong Weerasethakul; Juan Diaz Bohorquez (Moderation)

Berlinale Talents on demand

Dream On: Uli Hanisch

No one in production design knows how to play Berlin better than Uli Hanisch. From the the Golden Twenties in Babylon Berlin to the 1960s in The Queen's Gambit, Uli's work bends the present of the German capital to the time and space of the stories he has to tell. In his session, Berlin takes on the dimensions of a film set and we look at whatever is in front of us with the eyes of someone intent on transforming history into story.
With: Uli Hanisch; Andrew Amondson (Moderation)

Berlinale Talents on demand

What a Small World: Animation in Miniature

Animation cinematographer Tristan Oliver is very well-known for all time favourites like Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit, but also for his collaboration with Wes Anderson on Isle of Dogs and most recently the still rather secret The French Dispatch. Together with his gaffer, Tristan sheds light on his creative processes, which are defined by the task to find that which is "real enough".
With: Tristan Oliver, Björn Susen; Andrew Amondson (Moderation)

Berlinale Talents on demand

Dream On: Céline Sciamma

A film begins during a long dreaming process for French writer-director Céline Sciamma: notes are taken disparately while the story forms in her head. As soon as the writing begins, a lucid methodology sets in until the ideas become flesh. With her fifth feature Petite Maman in this year's Competition, Céline treats us to a talk that bridges the worlds of myth and desire and the realities of writing and directing.
With: Céline Sciamma; Anas Sareen (Moderation)

Berlinale Talents on demand