Lupita Nyong'o Makes History as First Black Woman On Berlinale Jury
Lupita Nyong'o has broken new ground as the first black woman to preside over the jury at the Berlin International Film Festival.
As one of the top five film festivals in the world, the Berlinale is an annual film showcase event. Organizers informed the AFP news agency last year that the event had not included a black jury head in its seventy-four-year existence.
The Golden Bear and Silver Bear winners will be announced by a jury headed by Nyong'o.
Berlin, Cannes, Venice, Sundance, and Toronto are the top five international film festivals, and they've often taken heat for having insufficiently diverse juries.
In 2020, American filmmaker Spike Lee became the first black person to serve as head of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival, the largest and second-oldest of these festivals.
At the opening of the event in Germany's capital on Thursday, Nyong'o said she was "greatly honoured" to take on the position.
She went on to say that the jury's deliberation on the winning films would be more meaningful with a more diverse group of people serving on it.
"That's the beauty of bringing people together from different backgrounds - we respond to different things," remarked the 2014 Oscar-winning actress for 12 Years a Slave.
"We have a lot of world experience and opinion and it's gonna be interesting. It's probably also gonna be spicy."
In their statement announcing Nyong'o's appointment as jury president in December, Mariëtte Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian, the festival's organisers, said that Nyong'o "embodies what we like in cinema" due to her versatility as an actress and her talent for appealing to diverse audiences.
The event will continue until 25 February, when the main category winners will be announced by the judges.
There are twenty submissions vying for first place, and three of them are from Africa. All of them involve tales set in Africa.
Some of these films are "Black Tea" by Abderrahmane Sissako of Mali, "Who Do I Belong To" by Meryam Joobeur of Tunisia-Canada origin, and "Dahomey" by Mati Diop of France-Senegal descent.