German director Tom Tykwer has been tapped as jury president of the 68th Berlin International Film Festival.
The helmer of Run Lola Run, Cloud Atlas and A Hologram for the King is one of Germany’s best-known and most successful filmmakers and one inextricably linked with the city of Berlin, where he lives and first started in the film business, initially as a projectionist and programmer for the art house cinema Moviemento and then as a founding partner in the leading indie production company X Filme Creative Pool.
Tykwer is also intimately connected to the Berlinale, where he has presented six of his films in the past, two of which opened the premier German fest: Heaven in 2002 and The International in 2009.
“The Berlinale has always been my favorite and my home film festival, and has supported me since I began working as a filmmaker,” Tykwer said Thursday in a statement. “We have a fantastic and broad history with each other. Now I can look forward to two focused and fun weeks of films with the jury.”
With Tykwer, the fest has nabbed a true cinephile whose eclectic tastes run from the obscure — he was an early champion of Canadian auteur Guy Maddin (My Winnipeg) — to the decidedly mainstream. His own work has wandered across scales, genres and styles, from the low-budget, high-concept action of Run Lola Run to the high-end period glamor of literary adaptation Perfume: The Story of a Murderer to the crime/sci-fi/comedy mashup of Cloud Atlas, which he co-directed with the Wachowski siblings.
In addition to writing, helming and often producing his own films, Tykwer typically composes their soundtracks as well.
Most recently, he has moved into high-end TV, producing, co-writing and co-directing Babylon Berlin, a period crime drama set in Berlin in 1929 and the most expensive German-language series ever made.
The 2018 Berlin International Film Festival is set to run Feb.15-25.
