Generation next

Shooting Stars jury member and film critic Charles Gant reckons he’ll never get jaded – as long as fresh acting talent keeps lighting up our cinema screens

I don’t know how my name popped up as a possible jury member for this year’s edition of Shooting Stars, but I certainly didn’t hesitate in agreeing to participate. A month watching the work of young actors across Europe, and then debating my discoveries with peers in various branches of the film industry: what’s not to like?
Of course, in my professional role as a film critic, I understand the primary creative role of the director, and the key contributions made by the screenwriter and the crew department heads. But when it comes to what excites me as a film viewer, what sustains my passion as I watch up to 300 features a year, I know in my heart that it’s actors that play the really crucial role.
It’s not hard for a film critic to become jaded: simply overwhelmed by the industrial scale of their viewing. And I know quite a few who seem to arrive at the screening room primarily preoccupied by two topics: what hospitality will be offered by the studio publicist; and at what time will the film be over?
But as I head towards my screening every weekday evening, I always do so buoyed by a sense of optimism. In every film, even if less than fully achieved, there will almost certainly be an actor to discover, or one I’m already familiar with but who I now see in a fresh light. There are literally hundreds of actors whose work I’m tracking with passionate interest. It’s a crazy obsession but I wouldn’t want to miss one of their performances.
Take George Mackay, for example, the 2014 Shooting Star who happens to come from my own country. I vividly remember watching him as Clive Owen’s angry teenage son in 2009 Australia-set drama The Boys Are Back, and looking out for his name. I quickly realised I’d seen him earlier that year with Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell in Defiance, and before that in PJ Hogan’s 2003 version of Peter Pan. I looked out for – and was again impressed by – him in the work that followed: teen ensemble Hunky Dory, TV miniseries Birdsong, Private Peaceful with Jack O’Connell, and then the trio of 2013 titles that helped snag him the Shooting Star status: How I Live Now, Sunshine on Leith and For Those In Peril. I’d never met him (I subsequently have), but already I felt invested in his career.

Fellow Shooting Star Mateusz Kosciukiewicz, from Poland, is a name that hit my radar more recently. It was back in August last year that I saw his astonishing contribution to In The Name Of, and was immediately Facebook messaging a Polish-based filmmaker friend to find out more about him. Maybe it’s because of the emotional connection you make with the character portrayed on screen, but it’s not hard to feel a rooting interest in the actor creating the portrait.

When the Shooting Stars organisers sent me the jury invitation, I had one particular reason for my ready assent. I’m interested in the cinema of every country, but the UK is understandably dominated by English language films, and my engagement with young acting talent is skewed towards the US and Great Britain. Here was a great chance to broaden my knowledge, sampling films from 24 countries across Europe. Some I already knew, of course – Cosmina Stratan shared the Best Actress prize in Cannes for Beyond the Hills – but many were fresh to me. When the package of DVDS arrived from the Shooting Stars Hamburg office, I was not disappointed.

Thanks to my participation in Shooting Stars I now have a whole new set of actors whose upcoming work I’m eagerly anticipating, to add to the long list that already includes past Shooting Stars such as Belgium’s Matthias Schoenaerts (a late discovery for me thanks to Rust and Bone), Germany’s Saskia Rosendahl (so brilliant last year in Lore) and Ireland’s Domnhall Gleeson (who is wonderful, and wonderfully different, in everything he does). So if I’m heading off to my evening screenings these days with an extra spring in my step, nobody should be at all surprised.

The SHOOTING STARS jury 2014 includes film critic and editor Charles Gant from the UK, Croatian casting director Oriana Kunčić, Norwegian actor and former SHOOTING STAR Anders Baasmo Christiansen , German film director Hermine Huntgeburth and film producer Jani Thiltges  from Luxembourg.

Charles Gant is chief film critic for the UK’s Heat magazine and a freelance contributor to Variety, Sight & Sound and The Guardian. This blog will appear at occasional intervals leading up to the Berlinale, and then more regularly during the Shooting Stars activity Feb 7-11.