Berlin Film Festival Appoints Tricia Tuttle As New Director
Tricia Tuttle has been named director of the Berlin Film Festival.
Tuttle takes over from Executive Director Mariette Rissenbeek and Artistic Director Carlo Chatrian, who are due to step down after the 2024 edition. She will take over the directorship from 1 April 2024. The announcement was made at a press conference in Berlin this afternoon featuring German Culture Minister Claudia Roth.
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Tuttle was chosen by a selection committee chaired by Roth, including All Quiet on the Western Front filmmaker Edward Berger, Film Academy director Anne Leppin, actress Sara Fazilat, producer Roman Paul, and Florian Graf, head of the Berlin Senate Chancellery. Tuttle was most recently head of festivals at the British Film Institute, where she led the London Film Festival. After leaving the BFI, she joined the UK’s National Film and Television School where she taught in the directing department.
“I have attended the Berlinale for many years as a professional and have really come to appreciate it very much. The Berlinale is a leader amongst A-list film festivals – welcoming and inclusive, and brimming with a breathtaking diversity of films,” Tuttle said. “It’s a festival that shows cinema as a most vibrant, often magical artform, one which can transform how we see the world and how we understand each other. What an immense thrill and privilege it is to have this opportunity to lead this important Festival. I look forward to a very successful Berlinale in 2024, and to joining the team afterward.”
Rissenbeek and Chatrian have been jointly running the festival since 2019 under a dual management structure put in place following the departure of Berlinale long-time director Dieter Kosslick after 18 years at the helm. Roth announced at the end of August that her ministry and the Media Supervisory Board of Federal Cultural Events in Berlin (KBB), which oversees the Berlinale, had decided to scrap the dual management scheme and put the event back under the control of a single director.
Rissenbeek announced in March that she was stepping down as Executive Director. Chatrian had expressed a desire to stay on at the festival but then said in September that he too would be leaving following the decision to scrap the dual management system. The handling of his departure sparked anger in some quarters of the film industry, with more than 300 film professionals signing an open letter protesting the “unprofessional” treatment of Chatrian.
This year’s Berlin Film Festival is set to run Feb 15 – Feb 25. The festival has already announced Academy Award-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o as competition jury head.
Alongside big changes at the top of its leadership, the structure of next year’s Berlinale is also set for a reboot. Earlier this year, the festival said it plans to reduce the size of its 2024 program and cull two competition strands as part of a widescale restructure to tackle a serious budgetary hole.
From next year, the festival will screen approximately 200 films, reduced from 287 in 2023. The festival said all sections, excluding the Official Competition, will present fewer films. Elsewhere in the plans announced, the Perspektive Deutsches Kino sidebar, which highlights new German filmmakers, was disbanded. Moving forward, films by German newcomers will be presented in the existing sections Competition, Encounters, Panorama, Generation, or Forum. The festival has also cut the Berlinale Series strand as an independent program. The TV-focused strand will instead be folded into the Berlinale Special Gala screenings.
Announcing Tuttle, Roth said: “Tricia Tuttle brings 25 years of film and film festival experience with her. Under her leadership, the BFI London Film Festival has not only seen an increase in audience numbers but has also gained an international profile and significance. She has developed creative strategies to meet the challenges of digitalization and made the festival more colorful, diverse, and accessible. Above all, she has convinced us with her clear ideas on the artistic perspectives of the Berlinale, a modern, team-oriented festival management, sustainable support for young talent, and contemporary sponsorship models. I am extremely pleased that we were able to win Tricia Tuttle for the directorship of the Berlinale. She is the right choice to lead it into a successful future.”
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