Although not yet announced, it is an open secret at the festival that Mészáros will be presented with the Berlinale Camera award in recognition of her services to cinema
Festival director Dieter Kosslick will present the award to Mészáros at a ceremony on February 13. The Berlinale Camera is awarded to a film personality to whom the film festival feels especially attached. The award is a way of expressing thanks and has been given every year since 1986
Mészáros's film Adoption will be screened after the ceremony. Mészáros won a Golden Bear for the film at the 1975 Berlinale, making her the first female director to receive award.
Mészáros was one of the first two Hungarians to attend the festival that year. The other was Judit Elek, who brought her film In Istenmezejé 1972-73 to the festival.
Five Hungarian films are on the programme for this year's Berlinale: Zoltán Szilágyi Varga's Court Record - In Memoriam Péter Mansfeld, Csaba Bollók's Iska's Journey, Árpád Bogdán's Happy New Life, Károly Esztergályos's Men in the Nude and Krisztina Goda's Children of Glory. Additionally, the festival's Forum selection will include a Serbian-Hungarian-German co-production film by director Srdan Golubovic entitled The Trap.
Potsdamer Platz during the Berlinale
Iska's Journey, which is the only representative from the region in the Generation programme, shows the difficulties of life growing up on the streets. Bollók shot the film in the autumn of 2005 after researching the lives of homeless children living in a mining region in the Southern Carpathians for four years. On Tuesday evening, the film was presented with the top award at the 38th Hungarian Film Week in Budapest.
Court Record - In Memoriam Péter Mansfeld, an animated film, will be in the Short Film Competition. Szilágyi Varga's 7-minute film, drawn with coal, recounts the story of Péter Mansfeld, who was charged with participating in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution when he was just 16 years old, then executed just a few days after his eighteenth birthday.
Children of Glory, a film about the 1956 Hungarian Revolution which has sold nearly half a million tickets in Hungary and was praised by US President George W. Bush at a special White House screening last year, will be shown as part of the festival's Special programme on February 10.
The youngest generation of Hungarian filmmakers will be represented by screenplay writer András Gerevich, director István Madarász, actress Kata Pető and director Péter Vadócz at the Berlinale Talent Campus.
The Berlinale runs until February 18.
