Berlinale Talents is the annual summit and networking platform of the Berlin International Film Festival for 250 outstanding creatives from the fields of film and drama series. The 2018 Berlinale Talents team will welcome filmmakers from 81 countries to Berlin from February 17-22, 2018, including 128 women and 122 men. One of their number will be Irish writer/director/producer Ian Hunt Duffy.
For six days they will have the opportunity to engage with one another, experts and the public, to critically question their own artistic standpoint and to further develop their film projects.
Blackrock native Ian Hunt Duffy is best known as the creative director of Fail Safe Films and director of the Academy-Award longlisted short film Gridlock. That film, which won the Grand Prix Irish Short at the Cork Film Festival in 2016 stars Moe Dunford, Peter Coonan, Steve Wall, and Amy De Bhrún. Hunt Duffy has also worked on a number of award-winning commercials and was producer on the IFTA nominated short Love is a Sting, which was narrated by Ciarán Hinds and written by Academy Award-winner Benjamin Cleary (Stutterer).
Watch Ian Hunt Duffy’s showreel:
Previous Irish Berlinale Talents include Ailbhe Keogan, Andrew Freedman, Brian Deane, Cathal Ó Cuaig, Cathy Brady, Conor Ferguson, Eamon Nolan, Ed Godsell, Fiona Ashe, Kate Dolan, Lesley Conroy, Luke Leslie, Mark Noonan, Michael Lavelle, Neasa Hardiman, Nora Windeck, Rebecca Daly, Róisín Loughrey, Rory Dungan, Sean Cuthbert, Simon Brown, Stephen O’Connell, and Van Poynton.
The selected Talents come from the following fields: directing (99), producing (52), acting (13), screenwriting (10), cinematography (17), editing (14), production design (11), sales and distribution (10), score composition (10) and sound design (6). 40 Talents will further develop with their documentary, feature and short film projects in the mentor-guided Project Labs, and eight film critics will join Talent Press to explore new paths in film journalism. The Talents are generally in the fifth to tenth year of their careers and come with professional expertise and festival experience under their belts. In addition to looking at their artistic achievements, the local impact and relevance of their work’s content in their respective countries of origin are also part of the criteria that the international selection committee considers when making their decision.
Berlinale Talents is an initiative of the Berlin International Film Festival, a business division of the Kulturveranstaltungen des Bundes in Berlin GmbH, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, in cooperation with Creative Europe MEDIA, a programme of the European Union, the Robert Bosch Stiftung and Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg. It was initiated in 2003.