Universal Cinema Film & TV Journal’s Amir Ganjavie interviewed Sebastian Markt, who has been the head of the Generation section for the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) since 2022 (along with his colleague Melika Gothe), after working there for about a decade.
Sebastian delves into the unique aspects of this section, discussing its focus on films for children and teenagers, the selection process, and how the festival navigates contemporary challenges such as venue changes and the impact of COVID-19.
Amir Ganjavie, UniversalCinema Magazine (UM): Can you tell us about your section?
Sebastian Markt (SM): It’s the section of the festival in Berlin that focuses on young audiences.
(UM): And when you say you are focusing on young audiences, what do you mean by that? Because “young audience” can have different meanings.
(SM): We have we have two competitions, Kplus and 14plus, which is sort of roughly differentiated by age. In general, we get broad audiences, and we have age recommendations for each film, but there’s no upper limit restricting who might be interested in the film. In Kplus they start from sometimes four and up to 13 and up. And then 14plus is the older of the two competitions, oriented more towards teenagers.
(UM): So, for 14plus are you looking for things that deal with teenage issues?
(SM): There’s not a strict rule. Often it happens that the protagonists of the films are roughly the same age as the audience we think would be most interested in it. But that’s not always the case. So, it’s more a sense that the films have something specific to say to young audiences, which can be in terms of the story, in terms of the lived realities that they reflect, but also formally.
(UM): And what about arthouse films? I see that the generation who are going to see them is 30 or 40+ because you need to have a kind of understanding of the roots of cinema and some understanding of what arthouse is. So, I’m curious, in your section, are you more open to cinema that is more accessible to all?
(SM): Not necessarily. I think the space we’ve carved out over the years is trying to expand the idea of what films for young audiences can be. That includes films that were specifically produced for young audiences. But a large part of our program is films that are not specifically targeted towards young audiences, but have something particular to say and that they speak to young audiences, which often means not only to young audiences. And, those are often the films that are more daring, more unusual in narrative and visual terms, and depart a bit from children’s cinema as a genre.
(UM): And do you have a definition for a good movie?
(SM): I think it’s much too narrow of a conception to from anything definable. I think we don’t program differently than other sections or festivals. We look for films that we feel enthusiastic about sharing with an audience. There is, of course, always the question of suitability that we think a lot about. Both in terms of, “Is it a film that fits our section as a section whose core audience is children and teenagers?” but also when we try to determine which competition a film goes into or what age recommendation to set for a film. Which is always a longer discussion, one that we discuss at length with our selection committee that features people from different kinds of backgrounds.
In terms of the topical questions, there is not a specific topic that we would exclude from presenting to young audiences because if it’s relevant to the lives of young people, then it’s also something that can be the subject of cinema for those audiences. It’s more of a question of how the film does it. What images and ideas does a film offer, and how does it allow an audience to process what they’re experiencing in the cinema?
(UM): I’ve heard from some other festivals, that you can sometimes have a better chance of having your film screened if you already have a distributor attached, is that the case for you?
(SM): I mean, of course, there are film institutes, companies, sales agents whom we know well, who know our program very well and therefore have quite a clear idea of what we’re looking for. But, we receive about 900 features per year and about 2,500 shorts. We work with large two committees for shorts and features, and we watch everything that we see. So, I don’t think it has an impact on the chance of a film that’s selected or not. I know that filmmakers often worry that if their film isn’t submitted through sort of a known entity to the festival, it might not be looked at seriously. But from a programmer’s side, it’s actually a huge incentive to discover new voices. So, we do look very closely at everything that that’s submitted to us.
(UM): I’ve been hearing a lot that one of the challenges right now in festival work is the instability of it, with people often working for only two to three months of the year—
(SM): I’m usually with the festival for nine months. And then it depends on the team. They are on shorter contracts. Most of the people from our screening committee do this as a kind of freelance work. And they all have other things that they do on the side. But in general, I would say that yes, of course, it’s the question of stability and sustainable jobs in the festival scene.
(UM): And recently the Artistic Director of the festival has changed Berlin. I’m curious if those changes impact sections like Generation or are you independent?
(SM): I mean, right now we’re kind of in a transitional moment. The new head of the festival has come on board and is in the process right now of assembling her team. There’ll be a new head of programming appointed sometime soon. And then the more detailed discussion about how we work together in selecting films for the festival, it’s always a question of who will come on board for the selection committee for the competition and official program. So that’s something that we’ll have to see over the next few months.
(UM): But will there be any changes to the Generations Section?
(SM): In terms of us as a program section, the basic outline of what we do (like we’ll have roughly the same amount of films as last year) will stay the same.
(UM): I saw that in Berlinale in recent years, some theaters had been relocated or venue changes or shifted. I’m curious because I realize venue securing is a big issue for many festivals. Can you speak on this?
(SM): The thing that has been affecting the festival over the last years is that the cinema situation on Potsdamer Platz has become more difficult for us because one of the big venues, CineStar, stopped being a cinema a couple of years ago. And there was a renovation of the CinemaxX which changed the capacity of the theater. So now it’s mostly used as an industry venue and not so much as a public venue. And that’s something that over the next years, I think the new director is also keenly focused on to reconceive the relationship the festival has to the city in terms of where the festival happens, how we engage the audience, and how we bring the professional audience and the public audience together.
(UM): And do you have any quotas in terms of race or gender in programming?
(SM): We don’t have a quota, but of course, it’s something that goes into consideration when we assemble our program that it reflects the diversity we see. We try to have a balance in terms of the gender of the director and also in terms of the characters. And we do our best to have the program reflect on the global diversity.
(UM): I’m curious has Covid, for example, changed the structure of your festival?
(SM): We had one edition that was canceled at the usual festival date. And the industry part of the festival went online, meaning they market the Berlin talents. And then we had a kind of special showcase event in summer where the films from the selection of the festival were presented in open-air cinemas. It was always a conscious decision for us to not do public screenings online because the importance of cinema as a particular social space for the kind of films that we care about for film culture is important to us. So, we focused on finding spaces where people could also physically get together as much as the circumstances in those years permitted.
Some other festivals chose different routes, presenting more of their program online, but since we didn’t do that, there was also not a question of how much we keep of it because we always focused on physical screenings in public spaces. I think in general in the way we do our work, in a lot of spaces, there has been a change that we maybe travel a bit less because there’s more that you can, in terms of meetings do online, you also start thinking more about the environmental impact of the whole traveling circus.
(UM): But I see the new generations are very different. They have very different habits of watching or looking at films or following social trends. I’m just curious how you are trying to consider those aspects in terms of marketing or in terms of being…
(SM): We’re kind of in the lucky position that the section has existed since 1978, and has been developing audience steadily. We don’t need to make a special effort to bring audiences to the cinemas. I think the thing that we’re thinking about is how to make or keep cinema as a significant space for a new generation, which is a question that comes up again and again. And of course, we notice that the things that work very well during the festival (we don’t have to make a lot of effort for the screenings to be full) are not the same for everyday cinema culture, which is changing. That’s something that we do think about a lot, how to keep cinemas as important and significant spaces for the new generation.
(UM): Questions of education, especially for young adults, are becoming very politicized topics in the United States. I think that there were many discussions about, for example, different ways of educating young adults about the reality of sex and sexuality. I’m curious if those things have some kind of impact on your decision.
(SM): If you’re referring to a kind of culture war that’s going on, I think in general, that’s something that’s noticeable more and more in Germany too. We always try to be brave in the kind of films that we program. And, the question of what we do or whether the individual films that we show, are suitable for young audiences, is not new to us. We try to think very carefully about what we show to young audiences. And one of the centers of gravity that we focus on is in the end, that we try to show films that carry some empowerment for younger people. And that’s one of the guidelines that we focus on. Not the question of if among some people with a more conservative outlook, it might provide them with the occasion of some sort of backlash. We center the young audience.
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