Editor

Following Berlin Talent Campus 2004, a total of 174 filmmakers from 47 countries have submitted their entries for the Berlin Today Award 2005.

As this year's Berlin Today Award (BTA) films travel from film festival to film festival for screening to audiences and filmmakers around the world, the three new films which will compete for the 2005 award to be announced on February 16, 2005 during the Berlinale Talent Campus are in the middle of postproduction. With the support of the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, two talents per film ­ a director and a producer, were once more given the opportunity to realize a joint short digital movie which has to have a connection with the city of Berlin.

The films which made the shortlist are Alright Love by Samuli Valkana (Finland) and Roman Sorger (Austria), Bucuresti-Berlin by Anca Miruna Lazarescu (Germany) and Christian Mungiu (Romania), as well as If I were a Fish by Tomasz Wolski (Poland) and Karina Griffith (Canada). Alright Love tells the story of a young woman and a young man who are led to an encounter in Berlin by means of signs and billboards. In Bucuresti-Berlin the young Romanian woman Ioana tries her luck to find her missing friend Tomescu in Berlin. If I were a Fish documents the life of Polish man Miroslaw Olechowicz in the Berlin borough of Rudow.

Hosts and members of the jury for the Berlin Today Award 2005 are producer Maria Köpf (X-Filme creative pool), as well as directors Hans-Christian Schmid and Michael Verhoeven. The premiere of the three short movies will take place during the Berlinale Talent Campus on February 15, 2005 in the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (House of World Cultures). For the realization of the three short movies the talents had 50,000 EURO worth of Medienboard sponsorship per film at their disposal and an additional 20.000 EURO in non-cash support from the Berlin-Brandenburger Filmwirtschaft. Eikon Media GmbH will produce the 2005 BTA films.

Berlin Today Award travels around the globe
Berlin Backstage, Best of the Wurst and the winner of the first Berlin Today Award, Myrna Maakaron˜s BerlinBeirut, met with good responses from all over the world. The list of festivals which screened the films is long and successfully promotes the idea behind the Berlinale Talent Campus and the Berlin Today Award worldwide. BerlinBeirut has 22 festival invitations and numerous prizes to show for itself, amongst them the 10,000 EURO •Discovery Channel Film Prize– for Best German Documentary at the Leipzig film festival and the ²Best Short Film/Video• award in Carthage, Tunisia. Grace Lee˜s submission Best of the Wurst showed this year at the Los Angeles Film Festival and the Pusan International Film Festival in South Korea amongst others. Berlin Backstage by Swiss team Stéphanie Chuat & Véronique Reymond was shown amongst others at the Locarno Film Festival.