2025 | Historic Berlinale Debuts
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind – George Clooney

Scenes from Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
Sam Rockwell, Julia Roberts
Historic Berlinale Debuts
© 2002 JVS GmbH &Co. OHG

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
Sam Rockwell
Historic Berlinale Debuts
© 2002 JVS GmbH &Co. OHG

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
Sam Rockwell, George Clooney
Historic Berlinale Debuts
© 2002 JVS GmbH &Co. OHG

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
Julia Roberts, Sam Rockwell
Historic Berlinale Debuts
© 2002 JVS GmbH &Co. OHG

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
Sam Rockwell, Julia Roberts
Historic Berlinale Debuts
© 2002 JVS GmbH &Co. OHG

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
Sam Rockwell
Historic Berlinale Debuts
© 2002 JVS GmbH &Co. OHG
George Clooney is inspirational as an actor, producer, screenwriter and human rights activist. At the 2003 Berlinale, the American impresses audiences with another of his passions when his directorial debut Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002) is selected for the Competition – and is met with great success. Lead actor Sam Rockwell is delighted to receive the Silver Bear for Best Actor, while Clooney himself receives a resounding signal that he can also accomplish great things behind the camera. With his directorial debut, he pulls off the balancing act of shaping historical and socially relevant material in an elegant way while simultaneously imbuing it with the type of dry and cynical humour unquestionably influenced by his work with the Coen brothers and Steven Soderbergh. This becomes a recurrent feature in his work as a director.

Kisses for the director: Sam Rockwell receives the Silver Berlin Bear for Best Actor for his leading role in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
In Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, we meet the American TV legend Chuck Barris as he looks back on his life as a successful producer (Barris: “I am responsible for polluting the airwaves with mind-numbing, puerile entertainment”) and inventor of “The Dating Game” and “The Gong Show”. In addition to his rise in the TV business, he also has a second career: as a CIA contract killer who is said to have killed 33 people. For Chuck Barris, thrills and stress go hand in hand ...
As a debutant director, George Clooney proves to be an inquiring and clever filmmaker. He is already intrigued by Confessions of a Dangerous Mind at script stage, especially because, as a child, he was permitted to hold up the text panels in the quiz shows run by his father, a television presenter. Clooney also approaches his debut in a formally exciting way, using varying image and lighting designs – from fading Technicolor for the cosy 1950s to hand-held camera for the harsher 1970s and the emerging Reagan era. His fascination with historical topics is also in evidence. He shoots his award-winning directorial work Good Night and Good Luck (2005), about the anti-communist witch hunts of the McCarthy era, in black and white. He travels back in time again with The Monuments Men (2013), which screens in the Berlinale Competition out of competition in 2014 and tells the true story of a special unit tasked with bringing pieces of art to safety during World War II.

Photo Call at the 64th Berlinale for The Monuments Men: Bill Murray, John Goodman, George Clooney, Jean Dujardin and Matt Damon
George Clooney clearly enjoys working behind the camera. After his Berlinale debut, he directs ten more films, from Good Night, and Good Luck to the 1920s-set American football comedy Leatherheads (2008), The Ides of March (2011) and, most recently, The Boys in the Boat (2023). What is so impressive about Clooney is not only his on-set skills but also his unparalleled talent for attracting the best in their field to his projects. The cast and crew list for Confessions of a Dangerous Mind reads like a “Who’s Who” of Hollywood with Drew Barrymore, Julia Roberts, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon among the cast while Charlie Kaufman writes the script, Newton Thomas Sigel is the cinematographer and Stephen Mirrione the editor.
It hardly needs pointing out that the star is celebrated by audiences and critics alike when he attends the Berlinale both before and after his directorial debut as an acclaimed actor in From Dusk Till Dawn (1995, directed by Robert Rodriguez), Three Kings (1999, directed by David O. Russell), Steven Soderbergh’s Solaris (2002), Stephen Gaghan’s Syriana (2005), Soderbergh’s The Good German (2006) and Hail, Caesar! by Joel & Ethan Coen (2015).