American director Steven Spielberg received the Golden Bear for lifetime achievement at the Berlinale film festival in the German capital, February 21, 2023.
Berlin – American director Steven Spielberg today in the German metropolis received the Golden Bear for Lifetime Achievement at the Berlinale Film Festival. After the ceremony, the festival included his partially autobiographical drama Fabelmani on the program. For this film, Spielberg already received two Golden Globes this year and has great hopes of winning Oscars, including for best film or best director.
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“I feel wonderful, it's an honor. It's a lifetime achievement award that allows me to look back on my career,” Spielberg said before today's ceremony. He also spoke about the great honor in his acceptance speech after receiving the Golden Bear. “I could never have done anything on my own. I have always worked with great artists in all my films,” he said. He mentioned that family support was also key for him. “And I'm not done yet,” he said of the shoot.
At the award ceremony, the audience greeted him with a standing ovation for several minutes after arriving at the Berlinale Palast. Spielberg did not hide his emotion after the warm reception. “Thank you, thank you all very much,” he said.
The ceremony was preceded by an afternoon press conference, at which he spoke about the fact that he decided to make the film for Fabelman during the covid-19 pandemic. “The fear I felt from the pandemic gave me the courage to tell my personal story,” the director said. It was covid that forced him to deal with age and mortality.
He also stated at the press conference that he does not intend to stop filming. He told reporters that he was working on a seven-part series for HBO based on the unrealized feature film Napoleon planned by American director Stanley Kubrick.
The director of the drama Fabelman, based on Spielberg's own experiences from childhood and adolescence and told from the perspective of a young aspiring filmmaker, received the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture Drama from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) in Los Angeles this January. Spielberg was also awarded in the directing category for the same film.
The fact that Spielberg will take home a lifetime achievement award from the Berlinale was announced by the festival organizers already in December. “During his incredible career, Steven Spielberg has not only inspired generations of viewers around the world, but has given cinema a whole new meaning as a factory of dreams,” said the festival's executive director Mariette Rissenbeek and its artistic director Carlo Chatrian at the time.
Spielberg he is considered a star director, as evidenced by the three Oscars he has won. He won two for directing the films Saving Private Ryan and Schindler's List. He won the Oscar for Best Picture for Schindler's List. He was also awarded in Germany, where, among other things, he received a state award in 1998 for the film Schindler's List. Former US President Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015.
