Berlin & Beyond is an annual film festival

Film festival

A film festival is an organised, extended presentation of films in one or more movie theaters or screening venues, usually in a single locality. More and more often film festivals show part of their films to the public by adding outdoor movie screenings...

 based in San Francisco, California

San Francisco, California

San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...

 featuring new cinema from Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

 and Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

.
Founded in 1996, the festival is a program of San Francisco's branch of the Goethe-Institut

Goethe-Institut

The Goethe-Institut is a non-profit German cultural institution operational worldwide, promoting the study of the German language abroad and encouraging international cultural exchange and relations. The Goethe-Institut also fosters knowledge about Germany by providing information on German...

 and has become one of the largest and most significant German-speaking

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 film festivals outside of Europe. For 15 years, over 500 films have been presented with over 110,000 attendees. Notable guests have included Doris Dörrie

Doris Dörrie

Doris Dörrie is a German film director, producer and author.-Life and work:Dörrie completed her secondary education at a humanist Gymnasium. In 1973 she began a two-year attendance in film studies, in the drama department of the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. She then studied...

, Bruno Ganz

Bruno Ganz

Bruno Ganz is a Swiss actor, known for his roles as Damiel in Wings of Desire and Adolf Hitler in Downfall.- Early life :Bruno Ganz was born in Zürich to a Swiss mechanic father and a northern Italian mother. He had decided to pursue an acting career by the time he entered university...

, Michael Verhoeven

Michael Verhoeven

-Life and work:Verhoeven is the son of German film director, Paul Verhoeven . He married actress Senta Berger in 1966; their son is the actor-director Simon Verhoeven. Together, the couple formed a production company to make films...

, Florian David Fitz, Donna Woolfolk Cross

Donna Woolfolk Cross

Donna Woolfolk Cross is an American writer and the author of the novel Pope Joan, about a supposed female Catholic Pope from 855 to 858...

 and Wim Wenders

Wim Wenders

Ernst Wilhelm "Wim" Wenders is a German film director, playwright, author, photographer and producer.-Early life:Wenders was born in Düsseldorf. He graduated from high school in Oberhausen in the Ruhr area. He then studied medicine and philosophy in Freiburg and Düsseldorf...

. Annually, the festival welcomes over 10,000 people, and celebrates seasoned masters, up-and-coming new artists, dynamic documentaries, and momentous classic films.

Through 2009, the festival took place each January. In November 2009, it was announced that, starting in 2010, Berlin & Beyond would be moved to the fall to coincide with German Currents - a similar festival of the Goethe-Institut in Los Angeles

Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...

. German Currents is a smaller festival, held at theaters in Los Angeles. The cooperation between the two festivals was prompted by the retirement of Ingrid Eggers, former festival director of Berlin & Beyond, who was instrumental in its founding. The cooperation is also intended to allow the sister branches of the Goethe-Institut in Los Angeles and San Francisco and their partners in the United States and the German-speaking countries to bring a larger and better selection of contemporary German-language films to the West Coast

West Coast of the United States

West Coast or Pacific Coast are terms for the westernmost coastal states of the United States. The term most often refers to the states of California, Oregon, and Washington. Although not part of the contiguous United States, Alaska and Hawaii do border the Pacific Ocean but can't be included in...

, and allow guest artists from Europe to make appearances at both festivals.

The festival’s current director is Sophoan Sorn, who was appointed to lead the 15th Anniversary Berlin & Beyond Film Festival, which took place in late October 2010 at the Castro Theatre, along with an “Encore Day” in San Jose

San Jose, California

San Jose is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the U.S., and the county seat of Santa Clara County which is located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay...

. Highlights of the 15th festival included: Feo Aladag

Feo Aladag

Feo Aladag is an Austrian film director, screenwriter, producer, and actor.-Early life and acting:Aladag was born in Vienna, Austria in 1972. She began her film career as an actress, completing her training in London and Vienna from 1990-1995...

's When We Leave

When We Leave

When We Leave is a 2010 German drama film, produced, written and directed by Feo Aladag, which highlights the problem of honour killings by depicting the drama of a Turkish family living in Germany.-Cast:* Sibel Kekilli - Umay* Nizam Schiller - Cem...

- German national entry for the Best Foreign Language Film

Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film

The Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film is one of the Academy Awards of Merit, popularly known as the Oscars, handed out annually by the U.S.-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...

 at the 83rd Academy Awards

83rd Academy Awards

The 83rd Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences , honored the best films of 2010 and took place February 27, 2011, at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles beginning at 5:30 p.m. PST / 8:30 p.m. EST. During the ceremony, Academy Awards ...

; Animals United 3D, Germany's first RealD 3D animated feature film; and a broadened Documentary Films section.

The festival's 16th edition will take place in October 2011, with Sorn remaining at the helm.