Star director Spielberg received an Honorary Bear at the Berlinale

Spielberg was visibly moved during the ceremony. Talk about an incredible honor. “I’m exhausted because I couldn’t accomplish anything on my own. All of my films are made in collaboration with amazing people. My whole life, my family—everything is a collaboration.”

Spielberg said he owed a lot to German cinema. He has named film pioneers such as Murnau and Lubitsch, but also directors such as Rainer Werner Fassbender, Werner Herzog, Margarete von Trotta, Wim Wenders, Wolfgang Petersen, Volker Schlöndorff and Tom Tykwer. “I’m all inspired by their films,” Spielberg said. “My work is somehow at home in Germany, and I really feel almost at home here tonight.”

Spielberg said this was particularly important to him because he is a Jewish filmmaker, and called for the fight against anti-Semitism to continue. Wound healing requires tremendous effort. The director recalled the sentence that the opposite of justice is not injustice, but oblivion. “You can only heal historical wounds by remembering.”

That’s why he founded the Shoah Foundation to collect documents and contemporary witnesses about the atrocities of genocide from around the world. Spielberg said a huge archive is now available. Germany has done much to deal with xenophobia, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. Many countries can learn from Germany’s determination that something like this will never happen again. At the same time, Spielberg warned against easy forgetting: “No country should hold back and straighten up.”

Spielberg has announced his desire to make more films. “I would like to overtake Manuel de Oliveira.” The Portuguese director, who passed away in 2015, made his last film at the age of 106. “Maybe I can do it,” said the three-time Oscar winner.

U2 singer Bono Spielberg has been described as “Hollywood’s greatest” in a tribute. Spielberg knows we can only live by love. Steven Spielberg is the soul of cinema. Bono compared the director to his historical figures. “He’s been looking back decades ago to see what that means in the present.” Spielberg is a “masterful storyteller” over thousands of years from dinosaurs to artificial intelligence. Spielberg touched people’s hearts with shock and delight.

Spielberg’s latest film, “The Fabelmans,” premiered during the ceremony. It will be in local cinemas on March 9th. The story tells of Spielberg’s childhood and youth as the son of Jewish parents in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s – and his beginnings as a director. The film has been nominated for seven Academy Awards, and Spielberg himself has a shot at the awards ceremony on March 12th for another director’s prize.

The Berlinale has honored a number of filmmakers for their life work, most recently the actresses Isabelle Huppert, Helen Mirren and Charlotte Rampling. Along with Cannes and Venice, the International Film Festival is one of the most important film festivals in the world.

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