Berlinale 2025: Honorary Golden Bear for Tilda Swinton

The 75th Berlin International Film Festival awarded Scottish actor Tilda Swinton the Honorary Golden Bear for her lifetime achievement. The award was presented at the Opening Ceremony at the Berlinale Palast on February 13, 2025.

Pictured: Tilda Swinton with Berlinale new chief Tricia Tuttle, photo by Laurent Hou.

“The range of Tilda Swinton’s work is breathtaking. To cinema she brings so much humanity, compassion, intelligence, humour and style, and she expands our ideas of the world through her work. Tilda is one of our modern filmmaking idols, and has also long been part of the Berlinale family. We are delighted to be able to present her with this Honorary Golden Bear,” says Festival Director Tricia Tuttle.

“The Berlinale is the first film festival I ever went to, in 1986 with Derek Jarman and the first film I made, his Caravaggio. It was my portal into the world in which I have made my life’s work - the world of international filmmaking - and I have never forgotten the debt I owe it. To be honoured in this way by this particular festival is deeply touching for me: it will be my privilege and pleasure to celebrate, once more next February, the seedbed that is this wide-eyed and reliably wonderful gathering,” says Tilda Swinton.

Academy Award-winning actor Tilda Swinton has been closely linked with the Berlin International Film Festival for many years, serving as the President of the International Jury in 2009 and starring in 26 films in the festival programme ranging from Caravaggio, which won the Silver Bear at the 1986 Berlinale, The Beach (2000), Derek (2008), Julia (2008), The Garden (1991) and Last and First Men (2020).

Tilda Swinton began her film career in 1985 with Derek Jarman and appeared in all of his films, including The Last of England (1987), War Requiem (1989), Edward II (1991), for which she was named Best Actress at the Venice International Film Festival, and Wittgenstein (1993) before his death. She gained wider international recognition in 1992 with her portrayal of Orlando, based on the novel by Virginia Woolf under the direction of Sally Potter.

Since then, she has developed ongoing relationships with many acclaimed directors, appearing in Tony Gilroy's Michael Clayton (2007), which won her the BAFTA and Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress; Béla Tarr's The Man From London (2007); Jim Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) and The Dead Don't Die (2019); Luca Guadagnino's I Am Love (2009), A Bigger Splash (2015) and Suspiria (2018); Joanna Hogg's The Souvenir Parts 1 and 2 (2019, 2021) and The Eternal Daughter (2022); and Bong Joon Ho's Snowpiercer (2013) and Okja (2017).

More recently, Tilda Swinton appeared in Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City (2023), with whom she has worked for the fifth time, and also in George Miller’s Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022), David Fincher’s The Killer (2023), Joshua Oppenheimer's The End (2024) and The Room Next Door (2024), which is her second collaboration with Pedro Almodóvar. She has just finished shooting The Ballad of a Small Player with Edward Berger for Netflix.

Among her other achievements, Tilda Swinton was awarded a BFI Fellowship and the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival for her life's work in 2020.