His latest film ‘The Fabelmans’, which is nominated in seven Oscar categories, will be screened at the festival’s special gala where he will receive the film festival award
The Berlinale surrendered this Tuesday without conditions to Steven Spielberg, the Honorary Golden Bear of this edition of the festival, who went to the German capital exuding a mixture of intelligence, humanity and simplicity that are unusual in cinema.
“I must have done something right in life if I’m here, before you, receiving the award for the whole of my career from one of the best film festivals in the world,” Spielberg answered, before a packed press room, when asked how he felt at that precise moment.
The American director did more than fulfill his duty to be grateful. He agreed to answer “a few more questions”after the time scheduled for his press conference and when the moderator -Rainer Rother, responsible for the festival’s Retrospective- had closed the turn.
‘Shark’1975- was the “physically most ambitious” film of his career, he explained, asked to name the most outstanding titles of his filmography. ‘Schindler’s List’1993-, on the other hand, was the most “emotionally” demanding film, he added.
‘Los Fabelmans’ -2022-, his last film, with seven Oscar nominations and will be screened at the special gala where he will receive the Bear of Honorhas become a kind of “emotional experience,” he said, alluding to its autobiographical ingredients.
It is a film conceived under the restrictions imposed by the pandemic and “under the impact of fear of covid”he explained.
In that period he spent a lot of time at home with his wife and children. There he wondered if there was some kind of movie “that he hadn’t done yet” and for which he “probably won’t have time to do another time.”
Thus, he began working on a script based on the story of his parents and his sister, a Jewish family, in the United States of the 50s and 60s.
Circumstances like this – “or like the fact of receiving a prize for the whole of a race,” he said – they make you “reflect” on your own existence and turn your gaze towards personal and family issues.
The Golden Bear of Honor to Spielberg (1946, Ohio) is part of a filmography with more than 100 titles or series. He has won three Oscars – among a total of 19 nominations for the Hollywood Academy Awards – and is one of the most versatile or complete filmmakers in the history of cinema.
The retrospective programmed at the 73rd edition of the Berlinale includes, along with the aforementioned ‘Jaws’, ‘Schindler’s List’ and ‘The Fabelmanns’, titles such as ‘Bridge of Spies’, 2015- shot partially on original scenes from Berlin for prisoner exchanges in the Cold War.
‘ET, the extraterrestrial’ (1982) and ‘Munich’ (2005) were also screened, focused on the hostage-taking of the Israeli team by the Palestinian commando Black September, during the 1972 Olympics. The kidnapping ended in a bloodbath , with nine hostages and a dead policeman, in addition to five of the eight terrorists, in the midst of a disastrous police operation that continues to embarrass Germany.
Spielberg declined to comment on what are the big milestones in his career –“don’t expect miracles: I’ll tell you that each of my films is like a son and I can’t choose”, said.
On the other hand, he declared that probably the most important thing he has accomplished is the creation of the Shoa Foundation, which emerged as a result of “Schindler’s List” and was destined to remember the millions of victims of the Nazi Holocaust.
“A film, like Schindler’s, occupies a relatively short space of attention. The Shoa Foundation is a long-term project”he claimed.
The institution awarded him a distinction not directly related to any of his films: the Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), the country’s highest institutional distinction, which he received in 1998.