The Berlinale has lost €2m in financial support from the Berlin Senate for its upcoming 2025 edition as part of drastic expenditure cuts to the €3bn overall budget of the city government.
However, Berlinale spokesperson Frauke Greiner said the event would not be impacted. “Despite the tight financial situation, we are able to secure balanced financing until the end of March 2025.”
“We are in regular contact with the Senate and learned that the €2m is not incoming for the 2025 financial year this summer,” Greiner told Screen. “We have a balanced budget through the next festival, and with a new director and executive team in place, we are working on longer-term plans. We’re very excited about the ways we are developing the Berlinale for the next few years.”
The 2024 edition of the Berlinale had a total budget of around €33m, the highest since 2011, with €12.6m coming from the state minister for culture and media (BKM) as well as cash injections of €2m from the Berlin Senate and almost €1m from the city’s lottery organisation to promote greater barrier-free accessibility and an inclusive environment at the festival’s screening venues.
“We will announce the official partners of the Berlinale 2025 in good time,” said Greiner today.
Culture cuts
The Berlin Senate cuts will also see the city’s three opera houses – the Deutsche Oper, Staatsoper Unter den Linden and the Komische Oper – lose up to 10% of their annual funding.
The Theatre and Opera Organisation Berlin said cuts of between €110-150m or more for 2025 would be “tantamount to an eradication of culture in Berlin”, in an open letter to governing mayor Kai Wegener, finance senator Stefan Evers and culture senator Joe Chialo.
“The institutionally funded opera houses, concert halls and theatres would be forced to largely suspend productions and performances that have already been planned and contractually agreed,” said the letter’s signatories, including actors Lars Eidinger, Nina Hoss and Burghardt Klausner, opera director Barrie Kosky and conductor Simon Rattle.
“With high fixed costs for personnel and building maintenance, the only budgetary leeway is in the artistic programme. The impact on the city’s cultural programme would be drastic.”
Uber cancelled
Additionally, the Berlinale has parted ways with taxi company Uber as a ‘principal partner’ of the Berlinale. Uber, alongside remaining ‘principal partners’ Armani Beauty and German public broadcaster ZDF, had supported the festival during its 2023 and 2024 editions with a VIP shuttle of limousines to bring film teams and festival guests to the red carpet at screening venues.
Uber also served as a co-host of the 2024 Berlinale Party at the Cafe International (previously known as Cafe Moskau) for around 1,600 industry guests.
“It has been a good partnership and our decision not to renew our collaboration for 2025 is by mutual and positive agreement,” said Greiner.
The choice of Uber as a major partner had been a bone of contention for the German capital’s taxi drivers who organised their own Taxi Film Festival this year with screenings of films such as Taxi and Taxi Driver shown in a taxi parked near the Berlinale’s HQ.
At a meeting with then executive director Mariette Rissenbeek in December 2023, members of the taxi drivers’ guild were told Uber’s financial commitment amounted to around €600,000 and also that Uber was not being considered as a sponsor for the long term.
Speaking to the committee for Federal and European Affairs/Media of Berlin’s House of Representatives in a hearing in January 2024, Rissenbeek explained the festival “was very interested in giving a fair visibility” to Berlin’s fleet of taxis and would remain in talks with other car brands about a potential collaboration.
“A company doesn’t support the Berlinale because it wants to sponsor culture. It supports the Berlinale because it wants to spread its brand, because it is following a marketing strategy,” she told the politicians at the hearing.
Oliver Fritz of Uber’s communication department for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, explained the company will focus its attention in Berlin from 2025 on its collaboration with the Anschutz Entertainment Group, which includes being the naming rights owner of the Uber Arena, the Uber Eats Music Hall and the Uber Platz square as well as serving as a sponsor of the Eisbären Berlin ice hockey team.
“We can look back on a very successful collaboration with the Berlinale in 2023 and 2024, which was a great pleasure for us,” said Fritz.
The 2025 Berlinale, the first under festival director Tricia Tuttle, will take place from February 13-23.
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