Honorary Golden Bear for Steven Spielberg at Berlinale 2023

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American director Steven Spielberg will receive an honorary Golden Bear for Lifetime Achievement at the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival, which will dedicate part of the film program to his works. The festival, which will run from February 16 to 26, will also screen his latest feature film, "The Fabelmans." Spielberg previously attended the 1999 Berlinale, where he presented a special screening of "The Last Days," the Holocaust documentary he executive produced and won the Academy Award for Best Documentary.

The festival previously screened Spielberg's films "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind" as part of a retrospective in 1985 and 2017, as well as "Sugarland Express" in 2004. His war drama "Empire Of The Sun" was screened out of competition at the 1988 festival.

Golden Bear for Lifetime Achievement

“With an incredible career, Steven Spielberg has not only enchanted generations of viewers all over the world, but has also given a new meaning to the ‘cinema’ as the factory of dreams.

Be it in the everlasting magic world of teenagers or in the reality that history has carved forever, his movies take us to a different level, where the big screen becomes the adequate surface for our emotions to be fulfilled." says the Berlinale director duo Mariette Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian.

Referring to the two previous editions that were affected by the pandemic, Rissenbeek and Chatrian added: " If Berlinale 2023 represents a new beginning we couldn’t find a better start than the one offered by Spielberg’s great work,”." As a director, producer and screenwriter, Spielberg has worked on more than 100 films and series over the past 60 years.

He was nominated for an Academy Award a total of 19 times during his career and won Best Director for Saving Private Ryan and Schindler's List. The films that will be screened as a tribute to the director and the date of the Golden Bear award ceremony will be announced later.