COMMON TONGUES – Speaking Out in the Language of Cinema

Language, common language, film language is the theme of the 22nd edition of the talent development initiative Berlinale Talents. It was long unheard of, and yet it is taken for granted today: since the 1920s, there has been sound and thus the spoken word in film alongside visual language. This opened up revolutionary new possibilities and still offers an infinite number of ways of understanding, communicating and also misunderstanding – on the screen and in filmmaking itself.

Imagine a room with people from over 60 countries, even more cultures and with very different personal backgrounds. This is Berlinale Talents. With English as a common basis for exchange, the initiative has been building communities for many years, proving that people can understand each other globally and with great diversity across language barriers. Film in all its variety of expressive possibilities connects us. But do we all really speak the same language of cinema? Both film history and our present day show that the way in which something is “said” and, of course, how it is “understood” – unconsciously and consciously – can have a strong influence on content and meanings. It is therefore worth exploring more fully the languages used in film and about film, word by word, image by image, and highlighting the commonalities in this diversity.

The Berlinale Talents management duo, Nikola Joetze and Florian Weghorn: “Surprisingly, it has taken more than 20 years for Berlinale Talents to take a closer look at the phenomenon that is actually always present when we meet in Berlin for our talks and discussions between Talents, guests and the audience. The exploration of these many voices aims for nothing less than a new understanding and comprehension.”

One eye? Many mouths? Everyone for themselves and yet all together? In their key visual, the Berlin-based graphic design duo Ada Favaron and Imad Gebrael take the motto “COMMON TONGUES – Speaking Out in the Language of Cinema” literally in the sense of the current Berlinale Talents focus theme “Language”.

Berlinale Talents is the talent development initiative of the Berlin International Film Festival and will take place from February 17 to 22, 2024 at HAU Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin. It is one of the most important forums for up-and-coming filmmakers and offers annually 200 selected creative professionals from the fields of film and series networking opportunities and access to a global community of almost 10,000 Talents.

In addition to internal workshops and think tanks, Berlinale Talents offers around 16 public events with festival guests from the international film industry. In 2023, these included jury president Kristen Stewart, Ruben Östlund, Euzhan Palcy, Geraldine Chaplin, Cate Blanchett, Nina Hoss and many more. The international network of Berlinale Talents Alumni grows from year to year – the former participants present their work at all renowned international festivals and also in 39 of the films currently submitted for the Academy Awards 2024. Ten alumni were also involved in a total of ten nominated films at this year’s European Film Awards.

The collaborative interplay of all film disciplines and the involvement of the cinema-loving festival audience have been the most important features of Berlinale Talents in Berlin from the very beginning. The initiative regards each of its 14 represented film disciplines and their representatives as equal in the artistic process and continues to promote this vision of a diverse and fair cultural sector worldwide throughout the year.

Berlinale Talents is a Berlinale Pro* initiative of the Berlin International Film Festival, a division of Kulturveranstaltungen des Bundes in Berlin GmbH, and is supported by the Minister of State for Culture and Media, Creative Europe – MEDIA Programme of the European Union, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, German Federal Film Board, Mastercard and ARRI.