A Dream Made into Reality

Dream On

Every year, we select a theme for Berlinale Talents based on what could best serve our potential Talents and the film industry as a whole. In 2021, we could think of no better thread to connect us all than the communal idea of Dreams. When we dream, we go to the movies according to Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. The opposite also holds. Since its very inception, cinema has invested our dreams with new meaning: early viewers were enchanted by a flight to the moon with Méliès or horrified at an speeding train coming their way in films by Edison and others. Since then, and through cinema, we have been offered countless vivid dreams: from the joyfully excessive cinema of Federico Fellini to the oneiric landscapes of Claire Denis and Sally Potter. It is precisely this utopian promise that drove this 19th edition of Berlinale Talents. We invited participants and audience to share their creative fantasies and professional nightmares in the pursuit of untold possibilities for artistic expression. And because our dreams have a better chance of coming true with the help of others, we welcomed a host of guests whose visions know no boundaries, whether poetically or politically.