"Cinema Needs Talent: Looking for the Right People" is the theme for the upcoming Berlinale Talent Campus. The Campus itself is far from lacking talent: In its eighth year of existence, the Campus has once again reached record numbers of applications from young international filmmakers. The interest has never been stronger: 4773 applications from 145 countries, nearly a thousand more than last year. Applications came in from 13 new countries as well, including Burundi, Guinea, Montenegro and Saint Lucia. 350 filmmakers will be selected and invited to attend the Campus from 13-18 February 2010, during the 60th Berlin International Film Festival. The six-day-long event at Theater Hebbel am Ufer offers them the opportunity to examine various aspects of their fields of work and to promote the idea of 'collaborative filmmaking'.

Stephen Daldry to chair the Berlin Today Award jury
Five short films on the theme "Straight to Cinema" were created with the support of Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg as part of the current Berlin Today Award cycle. They will celebrate their world premiere at the opening of the Berlinale Talent Campus on 13 February 2010. The winning film will be selected by a jury headed by British director Stephen Daldry, three-time Oscar®-nominee for the films The Reader, The Hours and Billy Elliot. The Berlin Today Award will be awarded during the "Dine & Shine Talent Rendezvous" on 14 February 2010.
Meanwhile, the Berlin Today Award 2009 winning film Wagah is celebrating recent distinctions: The film received the German Short Film Award in Gold for documentaries, awarded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media Bernd Neumann on 29 October 2009, including 30,000 Euro in prize money, as well as the 25,000 US Dollar-endowed Black Pearl Award for Best Documentary Short at the Middle East International Film Festival (MEIFF) in Abu Dhabi (directed by Supriyo Sen, produced by Detailfilm).

Alexandre Desplat will be the Mentor of the Score Competition
French composer and Golden Globe winner Alexandre Desplat has committed to mentor the Score Competition. Desplat, born 1961 in Paris, is one of the most versatile and sought-after composers of his generation. He made his international breakthrough in 2004 with the remarkable composition for The Girl With the Pearl Earring. Since then, Desplat has composed the award-winning scores for films such as Syriana, The Queen and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. He has received numerous awards, as well as two Oscar® nominations and in 2005 a Silver Bear for the film score to The Beat That My Heart Skipped (directed by Jacques Audiard).
The Score Competition offers three young composers or sound designers the opportunity to compose new scores for a pre-selected short film and record them with the German Film Orchestra Babelsberg, with final mixing at the Film and Television Academy (HFF) "Konrad Wolf". The scores will premiere during the Campus, and the best score will be chosen by a jury and awarded during the Closing Ceremony. The winner will receive a trip to the finest sound studios in Los Angeles, sponsored by Dolby.
The Berlinale Talent Campus is an initiative of the Berlin International Film Festival, a business division of the Kulturveranstaltungen des Bundes in Berlin GmbH, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media upon a decision of the German Bundestag, in co-operation with MEDIA - Training programme of the European Union, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg as well as Skillset and UK Film Council.