3 days Ago By Kevin Cassidy
When director brought his to the Berlinale in 1995, little did he know that he was kicking off what would become a veritable tradition. The film starred and Julie Delpy as two young students who meet on a Eurail train and enjoy a romantic walk-and-talk through the streets of Vienna before day breaks. “We knew it was a risk making this film, but that’s why we did it on a low budget,” Linklater said at a festival press conference.
“I don’t think they are going to lose money on this film.” That was something of an understatement. The $2.
5 million Castle Rock production not only earned Linklater the fest’s Silver Bear for best director but, released by Columbia Pictures, went on to become an indie hit, grossing $22.5 million worldwide. And so nearly a decade later, Linklater returned to the festival in 2004 with , in which Hawke and Delpy’s characters reconnect during the course of an afternoon in Paris.
Then, in 2013, Linklater was back at the festival once again to complete the trilogy with , again starring Hawke and Delpy, whose characters have become a couple but whose future is in question as they spend a day hashing out their differences while on vacation in Greece. At that film’s screening, the festival’s director Dieter Kosslick surprised the director by presenting him with a Berlinale Camera trophy, an honor introduced in 1986 to recognize talents or institutions to which the festival feels particularly indebted. Observed critic John DeFore of the movie, “ offers the possibility that the couple’s odds-defying relationship will end in a one-day conflagration of pent-up resentment and parental guilt.
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Turns out, that’s as dramatic as a ticking clock.” The film didn’t mark the end of Linklater and Hawke’s working relationship, of course. This year they return to Berlin for the world premiere of the director’s latest film, Sony Pictures Classics’ musical drama , in which Hawkes will play songwriter Lorenz Hart.
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