European Film Market 2022: Exhibition Spaces in the
Gropius Bau and in the Marriott Hotel Largely Booked Out / Under the title
SHAPING CHANGE “EFM Industry Sessions” Call on the Film and Media Industry to
Jointly Shape the Future
The EFM will take place from February 10 to 17, 2022 under the motto “It all (re)starts here”. The “EFM Industry Sessions” will discuss the three core themes Future, Diversity & Inclusion and Sustainable Development in the four programme strands “Producers”, “Distribution”, “Documentary” and “Series.
The Homage section of the 72nd Berlin International
Film Festival will be dedicated to French film and stage actor Isabelle
Huppert, who will be awarded an Honorary Golden Bear for lifetime achievement.
In conjunction with the Award Ceremony on February 15, 2022 at the Berlinale
Palast, the festival will screen as Berlinale Special Gala À propos de Joan
(About Joan, dir: Laurent Larivière). Huppert is one of the most versatile actors
in the world, and has played an impressive range of characters in almost 150
cinema and television productions.
Isabelle Huppert has been closely linked with the
film festival for many years and starred in seven Competition films to date.
She was first a guest in Berlin with La vengeance d’une femme (A Woman’s
Revenge, dir: Jacques Doillon). Director François Ozon cast her in his dark
musical comedy 8 Femmes (8 Women) as an unprepossessing woman who emerges in
the end as a confident beauty. The ensemble cast was awarded a Silver Bear for
outstanding artistic accomplishment. In L’Avenir (Things to Come), she also
plays a woman re-discovering her freedom as a philosophy teacher in a failing
marriage. Director Mia Hansen-Løve won the Silver Bear as Best Director for the
film.
“We are proud to welcome Isabelle Huppert back to
the festival,” say Berlinale directors Mariette Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian,
“the Honorary Golden Bear may seem like a natural progression in a career
without equal, since Isabelle Huppert is one of the few artists recognised with
acting awards at all major film festivals. But Isabelle Huppert is more than a
celebrated actor — she is an uncompromising artist who doesn’t hesitate to take
risks and flout mainstream trends. Awarding her our most prestigious prize is
to accentuate cinema as an art form, independent and unconditional. We often
see actors as tools in the hands of filmmakers, but Isabelle Huppert is a clear
example that the dynamic can be a true exchange. Actors can be the true engine
of creating not only emotions, but also concepts of cinema.”
Isabelle Huppert began studying acting at the age of
14, and later attended the Conservatoire nationale supérieur d’art dramatique
in Paris. She began her career on stage
and made her screen debut with Faustine et le bel été (Faustine and the
Beautiful Summer, dir: Nina Companeez). Huppert’s first appearance in an
international production was in the film Rosebud (dir: Otto Preminger). Two
years later, her starring performance as the shy young woman Béatrice in Claude
Goretta’s La Dentellière (The Lacemaker) won her the BAFTA as Most Promising
Newcomer.
Huppert early on came to the attention of a host of top filmmakers, such as Jean-Luc
Godard and Bertrand Tavernier. Her first turn for Godard was as the star of his
Sauve qui peut (la vie) (Every Man for Himself). Other world-renowned directors soon seized on
Huppert’s diverse acting talents, including Olivier Assayas, Catherine
Breillat, Patrice Chéreau, Claire Denis, Andrzej Wajda, and Joachim Trier, as
well as American filmmakers such as Curtis Hanson, Hal Hartley, Ira Sachs, and
David O. Russell. Italian filmmakers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani gave her the
lead in their film Le affinità elettive (Elective Affinities) and she was part
of the ensemble in Marco Bellocchio’s Bella Addormentata (Dormant Beauty).
French acclaimed director Claude Chabrol cast
Isabelle Huppert in a total of seven films, with each character as mutable and
complex as the next, beginning with the
title role in Violette Nozière. That garnered her her first Palme D’Or for Best
Actress at the Cannes film festival. Huppert and Sandrine Bonnaire played a
pair of homicidal friends in the director’s La Cérémonie, a role that won her a
César. Huppert’s final collaboration with Chabrol was her complex portrayal of
a powerful judge in L’ivresse du pouvoir (Comedy of Power), which premiered in Competition
at the Berlinale.
The actors film career has also been shaped by her
work with Austrian director Michael Haneke, with whom she has made four
movies. Her outstanding lead performance
in his controversial 2001 drama La Pianiste (The Piano Teacher) brought her
accolades as Best Actress in Cannes and at the European Film
Awards, among others. Beginning with her appearance
in Brillante Mendoza’s Captive, shown in Competition in Berlin, Huppert has
increasingly worked with Asian directors. That same year, she was in Hong
Sang-soo’s Da-reun na-ra-e-seo (In Another Country), playing three different women
who all have the same name.
Huppert has also made successful films with other
German-language directors and actors. She appeared alongside Hanna Schygulla in
Storia di Piera (The Story of Piera) directed by Marco Ferreri. And she took on
the lead as the nameless writer who increasingly loses touch with reality in
the film adaptation of Ingeborg Bachmann’s Malina (dir: Werner Schroeter), winning
the German Film Prize. She was top-billed in Swiss director Ursula Meier’s
Home.
Isabelle Huppert has been nominated for the French
film prize César more than any other actress in France, and has twice won
one. Her virtuoso acting style has also
brought her two Palmes D’Or at Cannes. She has appeared in more than 20 films
shown in competition there — yet another record. She won a Golden Globe as Best
Actress for her work in the thriller Elle (dir: Paul Verhoeven). That role as a
successful businesswoman who takes revenge on her rapist also resulted in her first
Academy Award nomination.
In addition to her successful onscreen career,
Isabelle Huppert also continues working on stage and has been awarded the
Europe Theater Prize, among others. After premiering the French version of
Orlando, she took to the stage under Robert Wilson’s direction once again as
the glacial marchioness Merteuil in Heiner Müller’s Quartett. She was equally
brilliant in Sarah Kane’s play 4.48 Psychosis staged by Claude Régy. A guest
performance of that play in Berlin marked the first time that Huppert appeared
on a German stage, entrancing audiences with her intense portrayal.
The French-German-Irish co-production À propos de
Joan (About Joan) directed by Laurent Larivière, which stars Huppert alongside
Lars Eidinger, will be released in Germany in 2022.
The Homage films:
La Dentellière (The Lacemaker), France / FRG / Switzerland,
1977, Claude Goretta
Sauve qui peut (la vie) (Every Man for Himself),
France / Switzerland / FRG / Austria, 1980, Jean-Luc Godard
La Cérémonie, France / Germany, 1995, Claude Chabrol
La Pianiste (The Piano Teacher), France / Austria /
Germany, 2001, Michael Haneke
8 Femmes (8 Women), France / Italy, 2002, François
Ozon
L’Avenir (Things to Come), France / Germany, 2016,
Mia Hansen-Løve
Elle, France / Germany / Belgium, 2016, Paul
Verhoeven
The Homage is mounted under the aegis of the
Deutsche Kinemathek.
