The Berlinale is to abandon the model of an executive and artistic director and return to a single director after the festival’s next edition in February 2024.
This change to the festival’s future management was decided after a meeting of the supervisory board of the Kulturveranstaltungen des Bundes in Berlin (KBB) organisation which oversees the Berlinale as part of the Berliner Festspiele along with the Gropius Bau and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt.
In a statement issued after Thursday’s meeting in Berlin, state minister for culture and media Claudia Roth explained: “The discussions we have had in recent months at various levels with numerous people who work at, with or for the Berlinale have led us to the common conviction that the world’s largest audience festival should once again be led and represented by one person.
“The necessary decisions for modernising the Berlinale, for securing its future and sustainability should now once again be in the hands of one person, in order to further develop the Berlinale as an audience festival in the federal capital and to strengthen it in [its] position in the league of international A-film festivals.”
An immediate consequence of today’s decision has resulted in the establishment of an appointments committee to find a successor to the Berlinale’s current executive director Mariette Rissenbeek who will step down from this post at the end of March 2024 after the festival’s 74th edition in February.
As far as the future of artistic director Carlo Chatrian, Roth said: “Herr Chatrian had agreed to enter into constructive talks with the future director about a future role in the new Berlinale team.”
Rissenbeek and Chatrian had both been appointed as the Berlinale’s executive and artistic directors respectively in June 2018 and headed up their first festival edition in 2020 after the tenure of the previous festival director Dieter Kosslick came to an end with the 2019 Berlinale.
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