Berlin Film Festival: Acting Combined Into Gender-Neutral Categories, 2021 Fest Will Take Place In-Person, And Other Awards Changes

The Berlin Film Festival will award Best Lead and Supporting Performances instead of Best Actor and Actress

The Berlin Film Festival may still be six months away, but festival directors Mariette Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian are already planning ahead with a major announcement.

From 2021 onwards the festival will no longer award Silver Bears for Best Actor and Best Actress. Rather, acting awards will be given for Best Leading Performance and Best Supporting Performance, regardless of gender.

This is a big change for an international film festival, as most only have singular acting awards for either men or women. The only awards organizations that delineate “lead” from “supporting” roles are country-specific awards (i.e. Oscars, Golden Globes, BAFTAs, etc.) and even then they’re still sharply divided by gender.

“We believe that not separating the awards in the acting field according to gender comprises a signal for a more gender-sensitive awareness in the film industry,” Rissenbeek and Chatrian said in a joint statement.

Such representational awareness feels responsive to much of the criticism other major festivals have garnered over the past few years, particularly in terms of gender parity. While it is a possibility that both of Berlin’s acting categories could end up being dominated by one particular gender for years on end (particularly men), Rissenbeek and Chatrian are at least creating a structure that will force the film industry to look at its own sexism should such outcomes occur. The creation of gender-neutral acting categories is also a positive step towards eliminating strict adherence to the gender binary within the arts, and (hopefully) won’t relegate the identities of non-binary and gender non-conforming individuals to extreme stigmatization.

In-Person

As of this writing, the Berlin Film Festival plans to take place in-person from February 11-21, 2021. Unlike big festivals like Toronto or New York, Berlin will opt to not hold a hybrid festival. However, their coinciding European Film Market will take on a hybrid format of physical and virtual presentations.

“Festivals and markets are places of encounter and communication,” said Rissenbeek and Chatrian. “This applies to the public as well as to the industry …. In times of the corona pandemic, it has become even clearer that we still require analogue experience spaces in the cultural realm.”

Both the festival and market will likely adjust to any possible developments with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, particularly with how it will pertain to Germany and Europe on the whole.

Other Changes

The festival’s recent announcement reinforced its decision made back in January to eliminate the Alfred Bauer Prize from all future festival iterations. The prize was named after the festival’s founding director and was typically awarded to films that “open up new perspectives in the art of cinematography”. The change was made after it was discovered that Bauer was a Nazi and had a hand in creating the Reichsfilmintendanz – a propaganda division aimed at controlling the film industry – during World War II with Josef Goebbels.

The award has been given out almost annually since 1987, with the prize changed this year to simply being called “Silver Bear – 70th Berlinale” in honor of the festival’s 70th iteration. Some sources have labeled it as the “Silver Bear Special Prize” instead, so it’s possible the substance of the award will continue on under another title.

The 2021 iteration of the festival will also be limiting its Generations sections to feature films only – that is, films with a runtime of 60 minutes or more. No short films will play in the section this coming year. It’s unclear if that change will carry over into 2022 and beyond, or if this will just be a one-time change.

Leave your thoughts on the Berlin Film Festival’s decisions to move to gender-neutral acting categories and to hold a physical festival next year (via The Wrap) below in the comments section. For more Berlin Film Festival news coverage, photos, videos, and information, visit our Film Festival Page. The 71st iteration of the Berlin Film Festival will be held from February 11-21, 2021 in Berlin, Germany. Want up-to-the-minute notifications? FilmBook staff members publish articles by Email, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, and Facebook.