Berlin Film Festival honors Steven Spielberg with the Golden Bear award. -

The director’s work has recently been recognized by the Berlin Film Festival where he was honored with the Golden Bear.

Renowned as one of the most influential personalities in Hollywood, Steven Spielberg is also one of the most famed directors and filmmakers in the world. Blockbusters include Jaws (1975), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Poltergeist (1982), E.T. the Extra Terrestrial (1982), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), Gremlins (1984), Back to the Future (1985), The Color Purple (1985), and Empire of the Sun (1987), just to name a few.

Spielberg has just been awarded with the Golden Bear for lifetime achievement by the Berlin Film Festival.

The applause and standing ovations didn’t seem to stop for Steven Spielberg, as he was awarded the Honorary Golden Bear for lifetime achievement at the Berlinale Palast tonight – congratulations!
“I’m not finished,” he told the audience. Well, we can’t wait for what’s to come✨ pic.twitter.com/rsYyA3Elwx
— Berlinale (@berlinale) February 21, 2023

An article by Variety reports that the filmmaker said that despite directing for six decades, directing “Duel” and “Jaws” felt like “last year.” “I know a lot more about moviemaking than I did when I directed my first feature film at 25. But the anxieties and the uncertainties and the fears that tormented me as I began shooting ‘Duel’ have stayed vivid for 50 years, as if no time has passed. And luckily for me, the electric joy I feel on the first day of work as a director is as imperishable as my fears, because there’s no place more like home for me than when I’m working on a set,” Spielberg said.

He adds, “I also feel a little alarmed to be told I’ve lived a lifetime because I’m not finished, I want to keep working. I want to keep learning and discovering and scaring the shit out of myself, and sometimes the shit out of you. “I gotta get back to some of those earlier scarier movies, but that’s another story for later on. As long as there’s joy in it for me, and as long as my audience can find joy and other human values in my films, I’m reluctant to ever say that’s a wrap.”

Steven Spielberg on young directors: « The Daniels did such amazing work with Everything Everywhere All At Once »#Berlinale pic.twitter.com/oe9ejM76PJ
— Euronews Culture (@euronewsculture) February 21, 2023

According to the director and filmmaker, the reason behind “The Fabelmans” is “it was time to look back at my early life at the world I was born into and emerged out of so that I could make my way make my mistakes and make my movies and because I made my movies, I get to be in Berlin tonight accepting this overwhelming honor for lifetime achievement.”

Steven Spielberg says “The Fabelmans” has overtaken “Schindler’s List” as the most emotional film he’s made. He received a lifetime achievement award at the Berlinale festival. pic.twitter.com/zjxUZFjDGK
— The Associated Press (@AP) February 21, 2023

Yahoo! reports that Bono made a surprise appearance at the Berlin international film festival to present Steven Spielberg with a special lifetime achievement award.

The article states further that the U2 frontman described Spielberg as “one of the biggest big shots in Hollywood”, as he presented the Oscar-winning director with the honorary Golden Bear award on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Reuters writes: “the prospect of making new films continued to excite him at 76, and unveiled new details of his planned HBO series” and “has just finished two films back to back: the semi-autobiographical ‘The Fabelmans’ and ‘West Side Story’, a film of the classic Broadway musical.”

According to Spielberg: “Whatever seized me as a little kid is the same feeling I retained all those decades later. When I find a book or a script or come up with an original idea that I think would make a good movie: that excitement … supersedes everything.”

Steven Spielberg attended the @Berlinale International Film Festival where he received the Honorary Golden Bear, an award recognizing his lifetime achievement, dressed in a blue double breasted Dior men’s suit by Kim Jones.#StarsinDior pic.twitter.com/QRWEKKKAcN
— Dior (@Dior) February 22, 2023

The same report shares that Spielberg “loves to work and needs to work”, and is finalizing a script left unfinished by his friend Stanley Kubrick at the time of his death in 1999.

He reveals, “We’re mounting a large production for HBO based on Stanley’s original script ‘Napoleon. A seven-part limited series.”

Spielberg had some words of wisdom to share: “If you want to be a movie director, first of all write,” he said. “Because it’s the stories that are going to get an audience to pay attention to you, not the shots.”