The 71st edition of the Berlin International Film Festival will be an exclusively outdoor event, the organisers announced on Tueday. It will be held from June 9 to June 20.
The opening night will take place at the Museum Island Berlin and on June 13, the awards will be handed out.
“The Berlinale is pleased to be able to give audiences the enjoyment of an open-air cinema experience at 16 venues in total at the Summer Special. Both Berlin’s falling seven-day incidence for Covid-19, as well as positive signals by government offices to support the request for a pilot project with mandatory testing have reinforced the festival directors’ planning of an all-outdoor event,” the statement read.
The announcement came after Germany decided to ease the Covid restrictions after the number of cases dropped significantly, according to a Reuters report.
In April, the organisers were sceptical of planning the Berlinale Summer Special owing to an updated set of restrictions added to the Infection Protection Act. The festival directors were in contact with the authorities “to determine the next steps for an all-outdoor event”.
“From the start, what we’ve really wanted to do is present the Berlinale films to audiences at a shared cinema experience,” the Berlinale’s director duo Mariette Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian said in the earlier statement. They added that postponing the Summer Special to a time other than June, or an online audience festival, was never an option.
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While the earlier issue was that the open air option does not allow for presentations of 35mm prints, the new plan reads, “We’ll be able to present the festival programme to Berlin audiences in almost every part of the city at a total of 16 venues, including a specially created outdoor cinema at the historic Museum Island Berlin as the main venue. The Kiez-Kino local cinema screenings will also take place as outdoor events, and be more strongly represented in different parts of the city.”
The festival is working towards “implementing the concept” with all the “hygiene and security plans” in place at the venues.
Ticket sales will start from May 27. The list of all the open-air locations where films will be screened, is linked here.