"The Performer" Awarded at Berlin IFF

February 12 at the 65th Berlin International Film Festival marked the Think: Film Awards ceremony. These awards are presented in the festival’s Forum Expanded section. One of the awarded films is Performer (The Performer), a film by Maciej Sobieszczański and Łukasz Ronduda.

Think:Film Awards

The Think:Film Awards are presented to “a film or artistic work from the Forum Expanded programme that creatively uses its own medium to artistically capture and reflect geopolitical contexts, and in doing so, expands the scope of aesthetic experience and stimulates a change of perspective.” This year marked the second edition of these awards. In addition to Performer (The Performer), the award also went to Pierre Huyghe for his work Untitled” (Human Mask). Akram Zataaris received special mention for Twenty Eight Nights and a Poem.

The award winners are selected by a three-person jury. This year’s jury members were Mohamed Beshir (Cairo), Karim Aïnouz (Berlin) and Ala Younis (Amman). The award, presented in cooperation with the Allianz Cultural Foundation, includes week-long trips to Berlin and Cairo with a public presentation of the winning works.

Forum Expanded

The Forum Expanded section of Berlinale was created in 2006 to present works that straddle the line between contemporary art and cinema. After the film’s premiere screening in Berlin, Oskar Sawicki, the protagonist of Performer (The Performer), presented a performance entitled I Am Sorry.

A Film Co-Financed by the Polish Film Institute

Performer (The Performer) is the latest feature-length production from Wajda Studio, produced in cooperation with TVP, Kosma Films, Heliograf, FilmFactory, Artcore, and the Art Stations Foundation. The project was produced by Kuba Kosma and Wojciech Marczewski and co-financed by the Polish Film Institute.

Translated by Karolina Kołtun