Berlinale | Experiences  3 min Berlinale 75: Thoughts from a Judge’s Seat

In the world of film festivals, two pivotal roles stand out: those of jury members and journalists. But what does each do, and can their roles conflict? Imagine yourself on a dual mission: producing live journalistic coverage and critiquing films as a judge, engaging in long discussions on difficult choices, even if everyone finally agrees on a winning film. These are not just hypothetical scenarios, but the experience of Ruya’s blogger Ahmed Shawky at the 75th edition of the Berlinale, as a journalist and as President of the Critics Jury for the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI).
 

I finally returned to Cairo after attending my 11th Berlinale. That long journey had begun in 2014, when I had first attended the festival as a journalist—before I joined Ruya as a blogger. This year was also a very special phase in my relationship with the festival: it was the first time I turned from a journalist into a jury member, after I was selected to chair this year’s jury for the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI).

Okay, that may be an exaggeration. It is true that I carried the orange jury card instead of my usual red press card, but the card itself sums up the paradox of the critics’ committee. It is a jury—but one composed of journalists, who are chosen based on their professional careers and nominated by national critics’ associations, taking into account the media outlet they work for.

Unlike the normal practice with juries, they are not asked to refrain from commenting on the films they watch, as this is the core of their work as critics. For example, Ruya published my review of the film Yunan, one of the films that competed in the International competition that I judged.

The orange jury card itself was the subject of a debate at the festival two years ago, when the Berlinale brought in an electronic ticketing system and defined the privileges associated with each card. The FIPRESCI jury members found themselves unable to book tickets for press screenings, and were barred from entering the festival’s press centre, as they were carrying jury cards. The designers of the booking system had not realised that they would be interested in attending press screenings, or that, for example, the international jury’s chair Todd Haynes would decide to leave his hotel and go to work at a desk at the press centre.

  After some debate, the matter was resolved quickly and efficiently, and since then the FIPRESCI jury members have carried a double card, orange but with a red circle, giving them the access accorded to both jury members and journalists, meaning they can enter the press centre and book screenings reserved for the media. That seems exceptional in theory, but in reality, it confirms the fact that jury members must practice two professions at once: actively covering the festival like journalists, while watching and discussing films with the same concentration as judges.

The Biggest Annual Jury Ever

FIPRESCI organises up to 80 juries each year, covering most of the world’s major festivals: Cannes, Venice, Toronto, Locarno, Karlovy Vary, and others, but the annual Berlinale jury remains the largest of all: the only one with 12 members. The reason is the desire to cover as many films as possible, at a festival made unique by its many categories, and by the huge number of world premieres at each year’s Berlinale.

The FIPRESCI jury includes four sub-committees: three critics who watch films in the main Competition section, three for the Panorama competition, three for the Forum category, and three to cover the Perspectives competition, which replaced the Encounters category covered by the fourth sub-committee in previous years.

As chairman of the jury, I was judging the international Competition section with two fellow critics: Maja Korbecka from Poland and Bianca Jasmina Rauch, an Austrian who represents the German critics’ association, who joined the jury hours before the festival began, replacing a colleague from Chile who had had to withdraw at the last minute due to illness. The jury for the Perspectives competition included critics, from Italy, the United States and Australia; the Panorama competition was covered by critics from France, Bangladesh and Brazil; and the jury for the Forum competition was made up of three critics, from Hong Kong, Peru and the United Kingdom.

Many Films and Early Bookings

The festival organisers asked each member of the jury to plan their schedule according to the requirements of their work, and to provide them with those schedules to ensure that tickets would be booked for the necessary screenings. This saved a lot of effort, especially as new tickets are put on offer every day at 7:30 am, and everyone accredited to the festival must be awake and ready to log on and book all the tickets they need before they run out. This happens a lot with films that everyone wants to see, or when the screening is in a hall with a relatively small number of seats that can fill up quickly.

But as we have seen, these were committees of journalists, so we still had to wake up early and go through the same adventure of booking tickets if we wanted to see films beyond the competitions that we were judging—that is, whenever one of us decided to take off the hat of a judge and put on that of our profession, as critics and journalists.

“Who Gets the Award for Best Film?”

The International jury had to watch 19 feature films that were selected for the competition, including 18 narrative films and a documentary. One of these films was about the consequences of the Ukrainian war, which was a puzzling selection, as that it was an ordinary work with little artistic value to give it this status.

However, perhaps it reflected the desire at the Berlinale to include documentaries in the International category on an ongoing basis. That strategy has already resulted in a unique event in the history of major festivals, when two documentaries won the festival’s Golden Bear award on consecutive years: “On the Adamant” by French director Nicolas Philibert in 2023, and then “Dahomey” by his compatriot Mati Diop in 2024.

  Judging a film is both an easy and confusing task for jury committees, and a momentous decision for the International competition committee in particular, given that it grants many awards (unlike other critics who only deliver one award). But the biggest question is this: Who gets the award for the Best Film at the International competition?

An Award Approved by Two Juries

Many good films were shown at the competition, but none of stood out so markedly that we unanimously selected it. This led to a discussion on the committee, in which we excluded any film that not all of us liked. After two sessions, seven films remained for discussion, out of which we would choose the film to win the (FIPRESCI) award at the 75th Berlinale. The process of elimination continued, until the three of us agreed to give the award to the Norwegian film Dreams (Sex Love), by director Dag Johan Haugerud.
  The film is part of a trilogy that the director began last year, with parts entitled Sex, Love and Dreams. In separate stories, they discuss issues affecting people’s lives and relationships in the modern world. The three members of the jury had not seen the first and second parts, but we saw the third as a complete work in and of itself, which raised poignant human questions about love and attraction, talent, reading, and the boundaries between reality and fantasy, especially when it comes to a thorny subject like a teenage student falling in love with her teacher.

What was unusual is that what decided the jury in favour of the film, apart from its obvious quality, was the career path of its director. He was a bookstore manager and novelist who made films that achieved little international success, until his limited fame took off with this trilogy after he passed the age of 60. The jury saw the award as an opportunity to highlight a talent that deserves to be celebrated, even belatedly.

We also thought the simplicity of the film might mean it was overlooked by the competition’s official jury, so we decided to give the critics’ backing. However, Todd Haynes’ jury surprised us the next evening by awarding the Golden Bear, the festival’s biggest prize, to the same film.

This was a rare example of the critics’ choice coinciding with that of the main jury—perhaps because the jury included a FIPRESCI critic, the American Amy Nicholson, or possibly because Dreams is close to the tastes of jury president Todd Haynes, who likes human films linked to emotions. There may be other reasons. What is important is that this consensus allows us to say with confidence that it is a film that satisfies most tastes. It completed the experience of the jury of the 75th Berlinale. It was one of the unforgettable experiences of my professional career and my long-standing relationship with the Berlinale.