The 2023 Berlin International Film Festival will honor French cinematographer Caroline Champetier with a Berlinale Camera award for lifetime achievement.
Champetier, who has lensed groundbreaking work for such directors as François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Leos Carax, Claude Lanzmann and Margarethe von Trotta, will be presented with the award at this year’s Berlinale on Feb. 23.
The veteran French cinematographer has sat behind the camera on more than 100 feature films and numerous shorts, from the start of her career in the early 1980s with Chantal Akerman’s Toute une nuit (1982) and Jacques Rivette’s Le Pont du Nord (1981), through such acclaimed films as Xavier Beauvois’ Of Gods and Men (2011), as well as von Trotta’s Hannah Arendt (2012), to Carax’s Holy Motors (2012) and Annette (2021).
Holy Motors won Champetier the Silver Frog at the 2012 Camerimage festival, which celebrates cinematographers, and she has received five César nominations, winning once for Of Gods and Men.
More recently, Champetier shot Fyzal Boulifa’s 2022 Venice festival entry The Damned Don’t Cry and the upcoming Cliquot, directed by Thomas Napper and starring Haley Bennett, Leo Suter, Sam Riley and Tom Sturridge.
“With her extraordinary body of work, Caroline Champetier has shaped the vision of many unique filmmakers, creating a bridge between the Nouvelle Vague and the younger generation,” said Berlinale executive director Mariëtte Rissenbeek and artistic director Carlo Chatrian. “More recently her collaboration with Leos Carax has shown new digital potential.”
Champetier has chosen Anne Fontaine’s The Innocents (2016), a period drama set in the immediate aftermath of WWII, to screen in her honor after the Berlinale ceremony.
In addition to the Berlinale Camera award, Berlin festival organizers on Monday completed the lineup for this year’s Berlinale Special program, adding two new films to the out-of-competition section.
Love to Love You, Donna Summer (aka Donna), a documentary on disco singing sensation Donna Summer from The 1619 Project director Roger Ross Williams and Brooklyn Sudano, will get its world premiere in Berlin. In addition, the festival will pay tribute to the first century of the Walt Disney Co. with a screening of Disney animated shorts selected by Disney Animation Studios President Clark Spencer, the Oscar-winning director of Zootopia and Encanto.
The 73rd Berlinale runs Feb. 16-26.