News
Welcome!
All the diversity of Jewish life, captured on celluloid! Join us on our journey around the world of Jewish and Israeli filmmaking at this year’s 14-day festival in Berlin & Potsdam featuring 33 of the best and newest films from 8 countries. Thirteen German premieres, including 2 world premieres, numerous filmmakers, discussions, and encounters invite you to take a glimpse into the world of Jewish life. No fewer than ten films are from Israel, one of the most exciting filmmaking countries of the world. And of course, we would not have been able to present you with this diversity without the help of our patrons, sponsors, partners, and media partners—that is why I would like to thank everyone who has made the 19th Jewish Film Festival Berlin & Potsdam possible.
We look forward to seeing you!
Yours, Nicola Galliner - Festival Director
Margarita Broich
Cinema must be interested in the whole world.
Interest is sympathy. It implies curiosity.
Interest in the other, but also interest in one’s own culture.
Cinema is the ideal place for this to unfold. Cinema is a wonderful place for people interested in the world.
A place for stories, for secrets, for triumph, for criticism, for yearning, for beauty, for gruesomeness, for wit, for fear, for tradition.
A place for coming to terms with things, for desires, for passion, for love stories, and for remembering.
A place for crying and laughing.
A place, as the great Curt Bois said, “too good to be true.”
Christian Berkel
“My mother’s story is one of the many stories of people who were driven out of this country because they were Jewish. I belong to a generation that had to seek out these stories because it was too difficult for our parents-–on both sides—to tell them.
I am a part of this story, just as we are all parts of a story.
For many filmmakers, the starting point of a story is an individual image—what remains when a story is resolved. They put this image together with others, creating a new story. It is the dialectics of storytelling. A form of storytelling in which they expose themselves and at the same time offer us a place for encounters. The fact that a Jewish Festival in Berlin and Potsdam features both makes me deeply happy.