Berlin International Film Festival
annual film festival held in Berlin, Germany
The Berlin International Film Festival (German: Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin), usually called the Berlinale (German pronunciation: [bɛʁliˈnaːlə] ), is an annual film festival held in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951 and originally run in June, the festival has been held every February since 1978 and is one of Europe's "Big Three" film festivals alongside the Venice Film Festival held in Italy and the Cannes Film Festival held in France. Furthermore, it is one of the "Big Five", the most prestigious film festivals in the world. The festival regularly draws tens of thousands of visitors each year.
About 400 films are shown at multiple venues across Berlin, mostly in and around Potsdamer Platz. They are screened in nine sections across cinematic genres, with around twenty films competing for the festival's top awards in the Competition section. The major awards, called the Golden Bear and Silver Bears, are decided on by the international jury, chaired by an internationally recognisable cinema personality. This jury and other specialised Berlinale juries also give many other awards, and in addition there are other awards given by independent juries and organisations.
The European Film Market (EFM), a film trade fair held simultaneously to the Berlinale, is a major industry meeting for the international film circuit. The trade fair serves distributors, film buyers, producers, financiers and co-production agents.
“Berlin International Film Festival” enters the record as annual film festival held in Berlin, Germany. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Berlin, International and Film can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q130871. VIAF identifies the subject as 126512760. The Library of Congress control number is n81061682. Authority coordinates are 52.520, 13.380. 4 of 7 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1951 and 1978.
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This entry incorporates text from “Berlin International Film Festival” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.