Berlin Film Festival’s New Director Tricia Tuttle Offers Progress for Fest Amid Industry Challenges
variety.comElsa Keslassy International Correspondent For decades, the Berlin Film Festival has been forging its own iconoclastic path, known for screening the best of world cinema and edgy underground discoveries as well as its cold February temperatures, while the starrier and warmer Cannes and Venice fests have been in fierce competition to grab the limelight (aka Oscar movies).
But the Berlinale — a public institution created at the beginning of the Cold War in 1951 — could be changing course next year with the appointment of Tricia Tuttle, a progressive American film journalist and curator who led the BFI London Film Festival during a fast-growing five-year chapter, and has been indirectly tasked by Germany’s culture minister Claudia Roth to turn the Berlinale into a proper rival to Cannes and Venice, while maintaining its political edge and flare for arthouse cinema.
The Berlinale runs Feb. 15-25. The appointment of Tuttle was greeted with a sense of relief by the bulk of the international film industry, who had been concerned about the German government stepping in to shake up the Berlinale’s leadership six months ago.
In the last couple of years, incumbent artistic director Carlo Chatrian, was applauded for having programmed solid lineups for the festival’s post-pandemic editions — and sported Kristen Stewart as jury president in 2023.
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