Berlin Film Festival Reveals 2016 Jury

 

It was confirmed in October that the three-time-Oscar-winner Meryl Streep is this year’s President of the International Jury. Now her celebrity colleagues have also been revealed: actors Clive Owen, Alba Rohrwacher and Lars Eidinger, film critic Nick James, photographer Brigitte Lacombe and director Małgorzata Szumowska will actively support the world star in her decisions about the 2016 Golden Bear and the Silver Bears.

With American actress and three-time Academy Award winner Meryl Streep serving as Jury President, the International Jury will decide who will receive the Golden Bear and Silver Bears of the 2016 Berlinale Competition.

Meryl Streep, Jury President, USA

Meryl Streep has appeared in over 40 films and is considered one of the world’s most talented and versatile actresses. She has received countless awards and nominations, including three wins among her unprecedented 19 Oscar nominations. She was honoured with a Golden Globe eight times and nominated an additional 20 times. Meryl Streep’s international breakthrough came in the late 1970s with the TV series Holocaust and Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter (1978, her first Oscar nomination), as well as the couples drama Kramer vs. Kramer (D: Robert Benton, 1979), for which she garnered her first Oscar statuette. She won further Academy Awards for her compelling performance in Sophie’s Choice (D: Alan J. Pakula, 1982) as well as her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady (D: Phyllida Lloyd, 2011). Meryl Streep has been a guest at the Berlin International Film Festival on a number of occasions. In 1999, she was awarded the Berlinale Camera and, in 2003, she shared the Silver Bear with Julianne Moore and Nicole Kidman for their performances in The Hours (D: Stephen Daldry). In 2006, she could again be seen in the Berlinale Competition in Robert Altman’s ensemble comedy A Prairie Home Companion. The 2012 Berlinale Homage was dedicated to Meryl Streep and she was also awarded an Honorary Golden Bear for lifetime achievement. Most recently, Meryl Streep excelled in films such as the historical drama Suffragette (D: Sarah Gavron, 2015), Ricki and the Flash (D: Jonathan Demme, 2015) and the musical Into the Woods (D: Rob Marshall, 2014). She will next be seen in Stephen Frear’s Florence Foster Jenkins. As president of the Berlinale 2016 jury, Meryl Streep takes on the role of a juror at a film festival for the first time in her longstanding career.

Lars Eidinger, Germany

Lars Eidinger is one of Germany’s most accomplished actors. He alternates between stage, screen and television roles without difficulty. Since 1999, he has been a member of the ensemble at Berlin’s Schaubühne theatre, where he has also directed plays. His most outstanding performances on the stage include Thomas Ostermeier’s production of “Hamlet”, which Eidinger has played nationally and internationally over 250 times since 2008.
His breakthrough on the screen was in Maren Ade’s Everyone Else, which won the Jury Grand Prix (Silver Bear) at the Berlinale in 2009. He participated in the Berlinale Competition again in 2012 with Home for the Weekend (D: Hans-Christian Schmid), and in 2015 with Sworn Virgin (D: Laura Bispuri). In that same year he was also in the Panorama section with Dora or the Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents (D: Stina Werenfels). Eidinger, who has received many prizes, such as the Grimme Award and the German Film Critics’ Award, has played in international cinema productions, including most recently the period drama Matilda (D: Alexey Uchitel). Now, after Clouds of Sils Maria, he is working with Olivier Assayas again, as well as with Philipp Kadelbach in London, on the BBC series SS-GB starring Sam Riley.

Nick James, United Kingdom

Nick James is an internationally renowned film critic, author and programmer from the United Kingdom. In the late 1980s he began to write articles about film for “City Limits” magazine, where he soon became head of the film section. Since 1997 he is editor of the internationally celebrated film magazine “Sight & Sound”. His articles on film, art and literature have been published in, for instance, “The Guardian”, “The Observer”, “The Independent”, “Vogue”, the “London Review of Books” and “The Literary Review”. In 2002 “Heat”, his book about Michael Mann’s film of the same name, was published. In 2010 he received the title of Chevalier de L’ordre des arts et des lettres from the French Ministry of Culture. Since 2012 he has curated the “Deep Focus” film series, which is put on twice a year by the British Film Institute at BFI Southbank.

Brigitte Lacombe, France

Since the 1970s, French photographer Brigitte Lacombe, who lives in New York, has ranked among the world’s best-known and most successful artists in her field. Her photographs frequently appear in publications such as “Vanity Fair”, “Vogue”, “The New Yorker”, “Zeit Magazin”, “The Financial Times”, and “The New York Times Magazine”. In 1975, one of her first big assignments took her to the Cannes Film Festival and ever since she has had very close links to the world of cinema. She works regularly as a special photographer visiting the film sets of directors such as Martin Scorsese, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Spike Jonze, Sam Mendes, David Mamet and Michael Haneke. From 2009 to 2013, she was commissioned by the Doha Film Institute (DFI) to take portraits of over 350 international filmmakers and actors, mostly from the Middle East region. Lacombe, who has received many prizes, including the Art Directors Club’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Photography, has published two books to date: “Lacombe anima / persona” (Steidl-Dangin, 2008) and “Lacombe cinema / theatre” (Schirmer/Mosel, 2001).

Clive Owen, United Kingdom

In 1991, right at the start of his career, Berlinale audiences got to see Clive Owen in Stephen Poliakoff’s Close My Eyes, which screened in the Panorama section. With it the English actor began a long list of impressive performances in which he has succeeded in balancing small arthouse productions such as Croupier (D: Mike Hodges, 1998) or Shadow Dancer (D: James Marsh, Competition - out of competition 2012) with big mainstream hits such as Sin City (2005). He received the Golden Globe and a nomination for an Oscar for Mike Nichols’s Closer (2005), and worked with directors such as Robert Altman (Gosford Park, 2001), Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men, 2006) and Spike Lee (Inside Man, 2006). Owen, who is currently playing the lead in Soderbergh’s TV series The Knick (since 2014), for which he has been Golden Globe nominated, starred in Tom Tykwer’s political thriller The International (2008), which opened the Berlinale in 2009. This spring he will begin production on Luc Besson’s Valérian and the City of a Thousand Planets.

Alba Rohrwacher, Italy

Alba Rohrwacher numbers amongst the most important actress of her generation. The daughter of a German father and Italian mother, she made her feature film debut with An Italian Romance (D: Carlo Mazzacurati) in 2004. Since then she has worked with numerous renowned Italian and international directors. She has already won the Italian David di Donatello film award twice (2007 and 2008). In 2009 she was celebrated as a European Shooting Star at the Berlinale and in Venice in 2014 she won the Coppa Volpi for Best Actress for her performance in Hungry Hearts (D: Saverio Costanzo). She had already made two Berlinale Special guest appearances, with What More Do I Want (D: Silvio Soldini, 2010) and Doris Dörrie's Bliss (2012), before she shone in the lead role in Laura Bispuri's 2015 Competition entry Sworn Virgin. Amongst her other successes are I Am Love (2009) by Luca Guadagnino, Dormant Beauty by Marco Bellocchio (2012) and Alice Rohrwacher’s The Wonders (2014).

Małgorzata Szumowska, Poland

Małgorzata Szumowska is among Poland’s most prominent filmmakers. She graduated in film directing from the Polish National Film, Television and Theatre School in Łódź. She has won several international awards and her films have been presented at the most important film festivals worldwide. Her first two feature films, Happy Man (2000) and Stranger (2004) were both nominated by the European Film Academy for European Discovery of the Year. The next movie 33 Scenes from Life was awarded at the film festival in Locarno. Szumowska’s films have been seen frequently in Berlin. Stranger was shown in the Panorama section in 2005. In 2012, Elles starring Juliette Binoche opened the Panorama and went on to theatrical distribution in more than 40 countries. Her first film in Competition at the Berlin International Film Festival was In the Name of, which won the Teddy Award at the 63rd Berlinale. Małgorzata Szumowska was seen in Competition here most recently in 2015, with Body, for which she won the Silver Bear for Best Director. The film went on to garner the most awards of any Polish film in 2015.