Collège Maisonneuve film students introduce themselves
Off to the Berlinale!

It's our fourth and final semester at CEGEP, and twenty of us film students from Collège de Maisonneuve's Arts, Letters and Communications program will have the chance to travel to Germany with our two film teachers, Olivier Belleau and Stéphanie Boutin.

From February 13 to 23, we'll be spending our days in the magnificent city of Berlin, attending the 75th edition of the Berlinale, one of the world's most prestigious film festivals. On the menu during our stay, a panoply of films of all genres and diverse origins, screened in some of Europe's finest cinemas, such as the Berlinale Palast, located on the dynamic Marlene Dietrich Square.

A rich and varied program

The program is rich and varied, ranging from German exploitation films from the 70s to an Australian animated film about space princesses, not to mention the new Korean film by Bong Joon-ho, in which the excellent actor Robert Pattinson is condemned to die and be resurrected in a never-ending cycle... We hope to see him on the red carpet, along with Timothée Chalamet, at the German premiere of James Mangold's A Complete Unknown, a biopic about Bob Dylan! Whatever the film, we're all expecting to be completely dazzled by the prestigious selection of films and guests for this anniversary edition, under the new direction of Tricia Tuttle.

But watching excellent films isn't the only thing we'll be doing during these ten busy days. We'll have the chance to explore the city and admire its legendary street art, a very important and renowned cultural aspect of Berlin, as well as visiting the Sachsenhausen concentration camp on the outskirts of the capital. For the first time this year, six students from the group will also be working at the European Film Market (EFM), representing our country on behalf of Telefilm Canada. Needless to say, it will be an invaluable experience!

We'll also be taking advantage of a number of great opportunities. For example, we'll be attending the Berlin Critics' Week (Woche der Kritik) in the company of Panorama-cinéma magazine's editor-in-chief, Mathieu Li-Goyette, who will also be giving us a professional film review writing workshop to help us write our texts for our partner, Montreal's Goethe-Institut, on German and Canadian films at the festival. These reviews and other texts about our workshop will be available on the Goethe-Institut website, so we hope to pass on to you our passion for the seventh art!

We couldn't wish for a better way to celebrate the end of our CEGEP career in film! This trip, which is sure to be memorable and rich in excitement, will surely help us get a little closer to our goal: to one day work in the wonderful world of cinema!