Berlinale Talent Campus - Hosts
Emi Wada, Dante Ferretti and Walter Salles

Creative synergy – with 530 film talents from 90 countries and a total of 80 international experts the 2005 Berlinale Talent Campus is turning into the school for those wanting to make it in the film business. It takes place from 12 – 17 February 2005 in the Berlin House of World Cultures. This year more countries have joined: For the first times talents from Swaziland, El Salvador, Bangladesh, Jordan, Ethiopia, Togo, Panama and Mozambique have qualified.

Leading International Filmmakers announced as Hosts
In their function as hosts Emi Wada, Dante Ferretti and Walter Salles will look after the up-and-coming filmmakers at the next Berlinale Talent Campus:

Designing the costumes for Akira Kurosawa’s Ran was the beginning of Japanese Emi Wada’s international career. Since then she has worked on numerous films, amongst others, by Peter Greenaway (Prospero's Books, The Pillow Book and 8 1/2 Women). Recent Asian productions Hero and House of Flying Daggers owe at least part of their worldwide success to the costumes designed by Emi Wada.

Outside Italy production designer Dante Ferretti first became known for his collaboration with Pier Paolo Pasolini in Medea and The Canterbury Tales. With his film designs for La città delle donne (City of Women) and E la nave va (And the Ship sails on) by Oscar winner Federico Fellini, he created looks which wrote film design history. Recently he has been working on Martin Scorsese’s films Gangs of New York and has been nominated last week by BAFTA for The Aviator.

As director of Central Station and The Motorcycle Diaries as well as co-producer of City of God, Walter Salles (also announced as a BAFTA nominee) has contributed to a number of art house films which instantly put the international film world’s focus on South America. Salles supports the Campus as host and will also be on hand as mentor for the Talent Movie of the Week team.

Revving up – Success Stories
“Year by year the pool of top-class Campus talents making use of our network, gaining new impulses and making their way in the film market increases“, Talent Campus Director Christine Dorn sums up.

For example five directors from the 2004 Berlinale Talent Campus are included in the German compilation of shorts Lost and Found, the opening movie of this year’s Berlinale Forum.

Director and actor Mohammed Ali Naqvi from Pakistan and Japanese director Atsushi Funahashi also met at last year’s Campus. By now the two of them are jointly producing Funahashi’s film Big River which the Japanese presented at the “Talent Project Market“ 2004. The film industry was also won over by this project: Takeshi Kitano’s agency Office Kitano is financing the film, which has already found a distributor.

Argentinean scriptwriter Vera Eugenia Fogwill took off after the 2003 Talent Campus: Her movie debut Las mantenidas sin suenos has its world premiere at this year’s Rotterdam Film Festival. Fogwill got to know the co-producer of her film at the Campus. Her script scooped up several prizes and was supported, amongst others, by the Hubert Bals Fund as well as the Fonds Sud Cinéma.