M. Night Shyamalan’s Berlin Jury, Including ‘Drive My Car’ Director, Discuss Bridging Mainstream and Arthouse Movies

variety.com:

Manori Ravindran International EditorIn a year when a festival darling like Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s “Drive My Car” was able to garner four Oscar nominations, including best picture, questions for the Berlin Film Festival jury — which includes Hamaguchi — centered on the role of film festivals in connecting both arthouse and mainstream audiences.Declaring that he “felt like a kid” at the Berlinale, where his jury will be watching 18 films in all, M.

Night Shyamalan sat beaming next to Hamaguchi, who is fresh off his Oscar nomination for best director earlier this week. Other jury members present included director Karim Aïnouz, producer Saïd Ben Saïd, director-screenwriter Anne Zohra Berrached, author-director Tsitsi Dangarembga and actor Connie Nielsen. “I’m very happy to be here,” said Hamaguchi. “I’m very honored that I belong to the team of Mr.

Shyamalan because he creates independent blockbuster films — or something in between. The perfect mix of independent and [conventional]: This is the message when Shyamalan was chosen as the head of the jury.”The Japanese director said there was, from his perspective, “no gap” between mainstream and artistic films.“The role played by the Berlinale is to declare there’s no gap,” said Hamaguchi. “Even though it looks like an arthouse film, there is a commercial tinge.

We will find ourselves in a situation to declare there’s no distance between these two categories.”Questions about mainstream versus arthouse fare, and whether these categories are as mutually exclusive as they once appeared to be, are in the air at this year’s Berlinale, where the program feels aggressively independent and practically devoid of studio fare.