Lupita Nyong’o, a Kenyan actress, has become the first black person to chair the Berlin International Film Festival jury.
The annual film showcase, also known as the Berlinale, is one of the world’s five largest film festivals. Organizers said last year that the event had never had a black jury head in its 74-year history.
Nyong’o will lead the jury in selecting the Golden and Silver Bear winners. The top five international film festivals – Berlin, Cannes, Venice, Sundance, and Toronto – have frequently been criticized for their lack of diversity on juries.
The Cannes Festival, the largest and second-oldest of these, appointed its first black jury president in 2020 when American director Spike Lee was chosen.
On Thursday, Nyong’o said she was “greatly honored” to accept the position at the event’s opening in Germany’s capital. She added that the jury’s diversity would improve the process of deciding which films to award.
“That’s the beauty of bringing people from different backgrounds together – we respond to different things,” said the actress, who won an Oscar for 12 Years A Slave in 2014.
“We have a lot of global experience and opinions, and it will be interesting. It will probably also be spicy.”
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