The Centrepiece interview: Tricia Tuttle says the Berlinale has a “massive role” in helping the industry to thrive

The news Tricia Tuttle was taking over as director of Berlin International Film Festival from the 2025 edition was greeted warmly by the German and international film industries in late 2023. Tuttle is well-liked and respected after five years at the BFI London Film Festival (LFF), helping to establish it as a significant pit-stop on the festival circuit.

She arrives at the Berlinale after a tumultuous five-year period for her predecessors, Carlo Chatrian and Mariette Rissenbeek, who jointly ran the festival during the pandemic. In their final year they were buffeted by the fallout from the Israel-­Gaza war, dogged by accusations some filmmakers had made antisemitic remarks at the 2024 closing ceremony, partly because of the suggestion the plight of the Israeli hostages had not adequately been made. 

Tuttle, whose calm manner is underpinned by a steely resolve, is ready to cut the ribbon of her first festival on which she has already sought to make her mark. She is supported by an executive team that includes Jacqueline Lyanga and Michael Stütz as co-directors of programming, and Tanja Meissner as head of Berlinale Pro. There has been a programming evolution in the launch of the debut fiction filmmaker-­focused competition Perspectives to replace the Chatrian-era Encounters section. Facing a lack of screens in Potsdamer Platz, temporary screening space has been created at the Stage Bluemax Theatre to host Perspectives and key premieres.

Tuttle, the first female festival director of Berlin (or of any of the big three festivals of Berlin, Cannes and Venice), talks about walking into a difficult environment after the 2024 festival, meeting the challenges of rising costs, and the sheer, unexpected joy of her first year in Berlin.

What does the Berlinale stand for under Tricia Tuttle?
The incredible diversity of cinema and a festival trying to have an industry impact and an impact with public audiences. If I have something that I’m bringing to it, how do you integrate and unite those parts of what we do and make it more impactful? I’m a passionate film fan but I also want to see the industry thrive and the festival has a massive role to play.

There is a delicate balance in that. You want to programme in a way that’s truthful and is about the cinema and how you respond to the cinema. I would never programme something just because I think the market is going to respond to it. But you also want to make the conditions right so that when you screen work it can get the cut-through with the right buyers, press and audiences so the film can achieve its own potential.

How important is it to you and the festival’s funders to secure the big blockbusters that translate to high-profile red-carpet media coverage?
It’s never been stated to me by our funders that that is a priority. But any festival director knows and wants to have some bigger marquee titles that help attract new audiences, new eyeballs.

I think about audiences and I think those films can be like a Trojan Horse that can bring new people into the festival. It also doesn’t hurt with our sponsors because those are very visible titles, quite often with red-carpet talent that bring a great spotlight on the festival. And they don’t just have to be American ones. [Chinese director] Vivian Qu’s Girls On Wire has some incredible talent, including Vicky Chen. These are films that bring new international audiences, new international eyeballs to us.

Last year you talked about wanting to have a conversation with filmmakers, particularly those from the Arab region, who were hesitant about bringing their films to Berlin, worried the festival was no longer a place for free speech after 2024. How many of those conversations have you had?
It’s hard to say because, as I’ve said before, it’s more about what’s coming to me second-hand about people’s concerns, than direct conversations. I’ve had some direct conversations. And it’s not just with Arab filmmakers, it’s also with other filmmakers who feel concerned they can’t speak out at the festival. I’ve had those conversations, and they’re private conversations.

Have you spoken with Israeli filmmakers too?
I did have a conversation with Tom Shoval, the director of A Letter To David, that’s screening in Special, but not about free speech. We talked about his film, because his film, it’s a very, very personal film about his dear friend [Israeli actor David Cunio] who is a hostage of Hamas. The film has a unique place in the Berlinale because the film they made together [Youth] was in Panorama [in 2013]. The film Tom has made is revisiting the relevance of that film.

How do you plan to embrace political debate at the opening and closing ceremonies without attracting the controversy of last year?
Opening night is redesigned because I wanted it to be more film focused. I have felt in the last few years, and I’m not alone in this, that it’s a long ceremony. I wanted to do something more concise. We have redesigned it so it’s centred around the honorary Golden Bear, which we’re giving to Tilda [Swinton]. There will be some opening remarks, and we’ll share a little about the programme and our vision for the festival. We will present the jury. And then we show the opening film [Tom Tyk­wer’s The Light].

How regularly do you talk with Claudia Roth, Germany’s state minister for culture and media, a major funder of the festival? Does she give you any guidance?
I have probably talked to her three times since I took the job. She doesn’t give me any guidance at all. When I have conversations with her, it’s to brief her on our plans or changes we’re making. My first briefing was in the summer about the plans we were making and where we were with sponsorship as we were in a really tough position and I was in the position of needing to ask for extraordinary funds again, which we received.

My meeting most recently was to brief her on what we have in the festival and what is happening and what she might want to see and what she might want to bring guests to. I don’t get information back from her.

You said in December you saw no reason to shift the reconsidered position of the management of the last festival to disinvite the AfD party from the opening ceremony. Is this still your position?
Yes.

Moving on from politics, how do you think your year as head of fiction at the UK’s National Film and Television School (NFTS), after the LFF and before the Berlinale, may have informed you as a festival director?
My year at the NFTS was really special to me. Not that it was gone but it was such a great reignition of my passion for films and filmmakers. It reconnected me with being interested in what filmmakers have to say, creatively, aesthetically, about the world that we live in. It made me remember all the things that I absolutely love about being near filmmakers as they make their work and wanting to support that.

You’ve brought in a few changes with the line-up, replacing Encounters with Perspectives, a competition for first-time fiction filmmakers. What makes a film a Perspectives film for you, rather than, say, a Panorama film?
We’re making choices about how to curate 14 films and we’ve got certain curatorial objectives. [We’re] thinking about all the countries around the world and all the filmmaking territories and we’re thinking about a curated selection which represents a breadth of the cinematic art form. We have films there that are incredibly different from each other in terms of their cinematic language. It’s about the relationship those films have to each other too.

What have you learned about German filmmaking this year?
The German film sector is incredibly varied. There are a lot of interesting, not younger, but emerging, newer producers who are working in a very exciting pan-European way. They’re smart co-productions, not in the old-fashioned Europudding way but about finding interesting film­makers and figuring out how to bring together producers from multiple countries to get that film financed and made.

A film like Armand from [producer] Sol Bondy, whose company One Two Films has a few films in the festival this year. Sol is an interesting example of finding the talent first and then figuring out how to enable that talent through co-­production. There’s a lot of that happening here — smart, cinephile producers who want to reach audiences with their films.

There’s a lot of formal breadth to German cinema too. There are films in the festival, like Köln 75 which is also Sol Bondy’s film, or Jan-Ole Gerster’s film Islands, which are both audience-friendly films with a lot of potential in the marketplace as well.

Have you personally watched every feature film selected for the Berlinale?
No. Panorama and Generation and Forum are programmed by section heads with their own selection committees. I tried to watch as much as I can but now my job is to try to see the ones that I haven’t been able to see yet. I’ve seen everything in Perspectives and Special and Competition. I’m very, very involved in the curation of those three sections.

The Berlinale, which had a budget of around $34m (€33m) in 2024, is facing challenges, like all festivals, as costs rise. Will you consider measures such as slimming the programme in an effort to find a solution?
We get a fixed amount of funding every year, and that amount of funding has been pretty stable for a while, but our costs have gone up. Every year in the last five years, we’ve had to ask for extraordinary funding. We’ve got a budget gap that we have to solve. We have to solve that problem every single year.

Carlo [Chatrian] and Mariette [Rissenbeek] already did cut the programme dramatically, probably by 30%, 35% and we are now at 200 contemporary films, including shorts and features. It is not a huge programme. And cutting films does not necessarily cut costs. A significant amount of our income is box-office revenue and we rely on that income, as every public festival does. There is not an easy solution. There are some other solutions I’m looking at to be more financially efficient. But it probably won’t be cutting the programme.

The Bafta Film Awards is taking place during the festival again on February 16. Has anyone in the UK complained about that to you? Or has the industry worked out how to adapt?
I haven’t had any comments directly from anyone from the UK, but I know it’s a problem for some of the Anglophone market. And increasingly, as the awards are becoming not just English-language titles, if people get nominations, it can be difficult if they have to leave on that day. What we really want is the festival to have more length than it has in the last few years. It has been the case that people have come for a couple of days and then if they’ve gone to the Baftas [at the weekend], they’ve not come back. And we’ve got great programming on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and all the way through the week. We want to make people want to stay at the festival, and they’ll miss out if they’re not here. We have looked at other options but we are in a good spot.

What is the biggest difference between leading LFF and leading the Berlinale?
The big thing is we’re programming world premieres. We’re really the first people in the world to see many of the films. That was true a lot of times [at the LFF] as we would see some of the galas at the same time as Venice or Toronto, but doing that at scale is a very different kind of experience. A lot of it is similar in strange ways. We’re both big city festivals in capital cities with huge public audiences, very diverse public audiences, and also very diverse programming.

What has surprised you the most about your first year at the Berlinale?
One of the things that genuinely has surprised me is how much joy there has been in this last year — even though things have been hard and challenging, I work with incredible people. We are so privileged to get to watch some absolutely beautiful films while putting the programme together.

I was a little scared when I came in that I was coming into a team of people who have been here for many years and that it wasn’t going to be as warm and welcoming as it is. But it definitely is.

Having got to know the city, what is your favourite Berlin spot that you recommend to visitors?
The one with which I’m most familiar is Prenzlauer Berg, where I’ve been lucky to find a flat. I love the neighbourhood. There are lots of great cafés and bars and restaurants. You can walk to Alexanderplatz, and I can walk to Potsdamer Platz.

I like Leipziger Strasse. There are lots of interesting galleries just before you get to the river. What I love about Berlin is that you have an area that doesn’t look promising at all but then five minutes later, these little cafés pop up and beautiful buildings pop up. I had such an interesting sense of discovery all summer when I was going around the city. When you are out walking around you get to see all these amazing secret places.

Finally, how is your German?
I am working on it! I’m determined to learn it. I’m hoping to have a lot more time next year.

• The lowdown on the Berlin Film Festival 2025 titles