Forum & Forum Expanded

Jul 05, 2022
Forum Head Cristina Nord to Return to the Goethe-Institut in July 2023

Cristina Nord, head of Berlinale Forum during a Q&A at the 2022 Berlinale.

In summer 2019, Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art appointed Cristina Nord as the head of the Berlinale Forum. Cristina Nord had previously been working at the Goethe-Institut Brussels, which granted her special leave for a period of almost four years. On July 1, 2023, she will return to the Goethe-Institut to head the institute in Nairobi. The 2023 Berlinale will thus mark her last edition of the Forum.

“I have experienced my years at the Forum as enormously enriching and am happy to be able to shape the 2023 edition of the festival one more time together with the Forum team and my colleagues at the Berlinale,” comments Nord. “The intense engagement with cinema, the exchanges with filmmakers, meeting film curators and theorists from across the world: these will all be cherished memories for me. It is a rich seam of experience that will accompany me to Kenya and that I will draw on as soon as I take up my new duties there. I’d like to thank Arsenal and the Berlinale for the trust they placed in me.”

“Since her first successful edition at the festival in 2020, which was also an anniversary edition, Cristina Nord has carried the Forum through the pandemic with a wealth of ideas and a sure hand,” comment Arsenal directors Stefanie Schulte Strathaus and Anna Mallmann. “In the process, she set some decisive directions that have left their mark on this section of the Berlinale as well as Arsenal in lasting fashion. We are very grateful to her for her commitment and look forward to our last shared Forum in February 2023.”

“Working with Cristina has been and continues to be fruitful and stimulating, we look forward to putting on another edition of the festival with her and wish her all the best for her new duties afterwards,” add Berlinale directors Mariette Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian.

Arsenal will announce the procedure for finding a replacement for the position at a later date.


Press Office
July 5, 2022