Emotional Steven Spielberg: "The pursuit of justice is the best hope for finding the meaning of life"

Berlinale Palast was full and everyone present stood and applauded when American director Steven Spielberg received the Honorary Golden Bear for Lifetime Achievement. The giant of world cinema deserved a long applause, which lasted for more than ten minutes.

"This award has a special meaning for me because I am a Jewish director," Steven Spielberg, whose semi-autobiographical film The Fabelmans is competing for an Oscar this year, began his emotional speech.

“I would like to believe that this is a small moment in a much larger, immediate effort to heal the broken places of history – what the Jews call Tikkun Olam, the mending and restoration of the world. I founded the Shoah Foundation, because I am convinced that what the historian Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi wrote is true: 'The opposite of justice is not injustice. The opposite of justice is forgetting.' Reconciliation is only possible when we remember what happened," said the famous director at the 73rd Berlinale.

Lessons on antisemitism and bigotry

"Germany has long been a key partner in the work of the Shoah Foundation. Citizens, the German government and the Berlin Film Festival joined us in collecting material and interviewing witnesses, in presenting documentaries, in disseminating educational materials, in helping to make our archives widely available in Germany," Spielberg expressed his satisfaction.

"The German people have shown a will to learn about the history of their country, to face its lessons about anti-Semitism, intolerance and xenophobia, harbingers of the Holocaust. Other countries, including my own, can learn a lot from the brave determination of the German people to act to prevent the fascists from taking over. A nation can be called righteous only if it rejects the convenient amnesia that tempts us all. After the 20th century, perhaps no nation should flatter or delude itself that it deserves to be called the Righteous. But we should not deny the possibility of justice. We should not stop pursuing that possibility. This aspiration is our best hope for finding the meaning of life. And, yes, it starts with remembering," Spielberg emotionally thanked for the Honorary Golden Bear for Lifetime Achievement.

Napoleon is getting ready

And while at the award ceremony he talked about the past, at the press conference he mostly talked about the future. He admitted that he does not currently have any directorial projects. Filming The Fabelmans and West Side Story took up all of his time, so he didn't find, nor was he looking for, something to have fun with soon.

But that's why he has big plans as a producer. He confirmed that the Napoleon series is being prepared, which will be filmed according to the script of the Stanley Kubrick, who passed away in 1999. It was Kubrick's longing for a biographical film about the famous French ruler, but he was never able to realize it.

“It will be a major production for HBO based on Stanley's original script. We plan to film Napoleon as a seven-part series," said Spielberg. He also emphasized that the series was created with the support of Kubrick's widow Christiana Kubrick and her brother, producer Jan Harlan.

This article was provided by KINO FILM.HR