The Festival in your Eyes

From the Roving Reporters to the Young Journalists

Generation is much more than just films. It has always given its audience the opportunity to actively take part in the festival. For example through the Young Journalists, a media project carried out by young people:

The project goes back to the year 1997, when the internet became more and more important and the website www.berlinale.de went online. The 12-year-old Gregor Hochmuth was member of the childrens’ jury and felt challenged to use the new medium for his age group: He created the website www.kinderfilmfest.de, on which a yearly-changing team of Roving Reporters between 8 and 15 years wrote critiques about the films of ‘their’ section and publishes them at the same day. The project worked independently from the Berlinale, as a service from visitor to visitor and became more and more popular. On the bilingual site, children found more information about the films and international filmmakers and journalists could get feedback on the audience reaction. Generation supported the Roving Reporters with film information and free admission to all screenings.

With the implementation of the youth film competition 14plus in 2003, the growing team of the Roving Reporters became the Young Journalists. Gregor Hochmuth was studying in the USA and stayed committed to the project. The Young Journalists were now supervised by the Berlinale itself and the journalist Julia Kaiser coordinated and supported the 30 Young Journalists with their work. The new domain www.junge journalisten.berlinale.de was launched in 2006. It has allowed the Young Journalists to edit and decide about the content of their website independently.

Since 2007, Young Journalists from abroad have also joined the team and written about the Generation films in English. In 2008, young people from Poland, Denmark and the USA stayed in Berlin with their German colleagues.