The Berlinale’s impish festival director runs the world’s biggest public film event as if it were a kitchen party. The stars love him for his energy and comically mangled English.
Arno Burgi/NewscomBERLIN – Dieter Kosslick has extended his contract as director of the Berlin International Film Festival through 2016.
Kosslick, who has run the A-list fest since 2002, extended his current contract, which expires in 2013, for a further three years.
“The German culture minister Bernd Neumann offered to extend my contract,” Kosslick said Thursday. “It’s nice that I can continue to run the Berlinale.”
The news comes a day after the Cannes film festival extended the tenures of festival director Thierry Fremaux and Cannes president Gilles Jacob through 2014.
It’s a different story in the other of the big three European festivals, Venice, where the fate of artistic director Marco Mueller remains unclear just days before the end of his current mandate.
In Berlin, Kosslick is credited with reviving the German festival and, with the expansion of Berlin’s European Film Market, making it a can’t miss event for the international movie industry.
