Is it actually a quick run? The new festival boss Tricia Tuttle had promised a short gala, even because of the XXL length of Tom Tykwers opening film “Das Licht” with 160 minutes. So go: Moderator Désirée Nosbusch welcomes Tilda Swinton, who is immediately awarded the golden honorary bear for her life’s work.
A friendly-fixed hello also to Berlin’s ruling mayor, Minister of Culture Claudia Roth, the Minister of Culture: Inside from Slovenia, Spain and Ukraine, and an extra soot to the people in the seven German cinemas in which the gala will be transferred live for the first time.
The world politics is initially left out. Nosbusch’s solidarity address to the people in Munich, where a car races into a demo in the morning, Pars Pro Toto is standing. Tricia Tuttle also takes the art of brevity, breaks a lance for Berlin culture, calls the local film scene the most fantastic in the world. Not that something scares her, but this soft “CH” when I said is a challenge.
Fixed to the moody Swinton Laudatio of the Oscar winner Edward Berger: Tom, Tricia, Todd (Haynes, the jury president), Tilda, so many TS that evening! To appreciate the Scottish actress can only be an inadequate effort, says Berger. Your secret? Your exceptionally beautiful soul. Which made many directors work with her several times. Sometimes even twice in a film, like Luca Guadagnino in “Suspiria”.
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© AFP/RONNY HARTMANN
“Reality is boring”, she recently said to him when filming in Macao: Berger is currently realizing the novel adaptation of “The Ballad of a Small Player”, with Swinton and Colin Farrell.
It is then at Tilda Swinton to blow up the time frame in all soul rest with her poetic and political acceptance speech. On her first Berlinale visit with Derek Jarman’s “Caravaggio” in 1986 she was 25, looking for her place in the world. “We trudged with snow on the boots in the Zoo Palace, Werner Schroeter showed, the Rosenkönig ‘in the Delphi, the Teddy’s premiere and the wall was still.” They combine 40 years of camaraderie and friendship with the city and the festival. Again and again Berlin was her “home”, that she says in German.
The film together before had shown her in all her elegance, revealed her coolness and power, her distinct pronunciation, the changeability, authority and aura of her pale, fine, striking face.
“I make films as a fan,” continues the actress from the Scottish aristocracy, who worked with numerous large author filmmakers, the Coen brothers, Wes Anderson, Almodóvar. “As a lover of darkness, silence, the freedom of sounds, the open invitation to dream in the middle of a bustling crowd.”
Noble stature in black winter robe: Swinton is candle straight. She talks about the treasure of the language and the beauty of the unspoken, about the magic, the openness, the joke and the thrill of the cinema, in order to move to political in the second part of her speech.
Swinton Damn Trump’s vision of Gaza as Riviera of the Middle East
The cinema can convey what humanity means, she says. It is an independent empire, “inventible for crew, colonization and Riviera property land possession”. An unmistakable allusion to Donald Trump’s consideration of transforming the bombed Gaza strip into the Riviera of the Middle East and selling the Palestinians from there.
Tilda Swinton, after October 7, the Hamas terrorist attack against Israel, had expressed her solidarity with the people in Gaza-which aroused fears that she would also use the Berlinale opening for a pro-Palestinian statement. But it does not name any names or states. She talks exclusively about the cinema as “a country without borders, without deportations and visa light”, and it speaks about the world. Also about the cruelty of mass murders “which are committed under our supervision”. If you speak for humanity and solidarity, it never includes being against other people, she adds.
She also comments on the film industry and emphasizes streamers to build cinemas. Yes, she asks all people to found cinemas, “in villages, big cities, refugee camps, old people’s homes and on inflatable islands in the ocean”. Huge applause. A similar serious speech, which has been grazed, the great film and human issues, has never been kept during a Berlinale opening.
The jury President Todd Haynes then only remains to be trifled with the freedom and diversity of expression. Tricia Tuttle quickly lists the most important war and crisis regions in the world, Sudan, Israel, Gaza, Ukraine, she also mentions the Lebanon and the fires in LA. She knows that the cinema will not solve the multitude of problems, but it can be a light in the dark. One that never goes out, as Tilda Swinton said.