Shooting Stars Presents Up-and-Coming European Actors at Berlinale

Alissa Simon
·3 min read
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As some former European Shooting Stars celebrate Oscar noms for their latest films, the Europe-wide initiative to draw attention to up-and-coming performers coordinated by European Film Promotion introduces another 10 talents during the Berlinale. From Feb. 16-19, the selected actors will participate in workshops, as well as meetings with producers and casting directors.

Asta Kamma August
SWEDEN
The older daughter of Danish helmer Bille and Swedish actor Pernilla, August is fluent in Swedish, Danish and English, and performs for theater, film and TV in Denmark and Sweden. Her latest credits include Mikael Marcimain’s “Blackwater” for Swedish TV and Thomas Vinterberg’s “Families Like Ours” for Danish TV.

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Valentina Bellè
ITALY
The actor’s upcoming film projects include Marco Tullio Giordana’s “The Life Apart” and Simone Godano’s “Sei Fratelli,” as well as the series “A.C.A.B.” on tap. The Verona-born star, who is fluent in English, participates in the non-profit Pen Paper Peace, providing support to middle and high school children.

Suzy Bemba
FRANCE
The versatile Bemba was also chosen as one of UniFrance’s 10 Talents to Watch of 2024. In addition to a striking range of roles directed by auteurs such as Yorgos Lanthimos and Anthony Chen, the French-English-Spanish speaker is a co-founder of the French professional support group the Actors Assn. (ADA), which fights for better on set protections for performers.

Salome Demuria
GEORGIA
Known for her intense performances on stage and screen, the prizewinning Abkhazia-born thesp is also fluent in English and Russian. A former board member of the Georgian Film Academy, Demuria’s latest feature, “The Antique,” reunites her with helmer Rusudan Glurjide (“The House of Others”) and is forthcoming on the slate of sales agent MPM Premium.

Thibaud Dooms
BELGIUM
The multi-lingual Dooms earned a B.A. from the Amsterdam Academy of Theatre and Dance, in the process earning an award as the most promising theater school graduate in the Netherlands. A writer, poet, singer, piano player and visual artist, he has just directed a short, “God Lives in Texas,” in which he plays all the male and female roles.

Džiugas Grinys
LITHUANIA
After representing Lithuanian theater at home and abroad with resonant performances, Grinys found equal acclaim onscreen for his lead role in the coming-of-age story “Southern Chronicles.” Perhaps theater will always be his first love, but English-fluent Grinys is on course to work internationally.

Éanna Hardwicke
IRELAND
Hardwicke earned critical acclaim from British newspapers in 2023 for his charismatic turn as the murderous student Ben Field in the true-crime miniseries “The Sixth Commandment.” He will appear later this year in Amazon’s “A Very Royal Scandal,” a three parter about the infamous 2019 BBC interview with Prince Andrew. Hardwicke also speaks Spanish and Gaelic.

Katharina Stark
GERMANY
An ability with languages including English, French, Spanish and Polish makes sense for Stark, whose breakout role was as a translator during the trials of Auschwitz officials in the Disney+ series “The Interpreter of Silence.” Other recent leading roles for the Drama School Otto Falckenberg grad include the film “Sturm und Drang” and the Arte/ZDF series “I Am the Greatest.”

Margarita Stoykova
BULGARIA
Stoykova began her performing career as a dancer at age of 6. One of the biggest dreams of this recent high school graduate is to attend drama school in London. The Bulgarian, Russian and English speaker hopes that part of her Shooting Star experience in Berlin will include meeting a compatible agent; she looks forward to working internationally.

Kamila Urzędowska
POLAND
A Wroclaw Theater School graduate who also speaks English and German, Urzędowska shot to international attention as the lead of “The Peasants.” Helmers Hugh and D.K. Welchman say, “It was important that the role of Jagna was played not only by ‘the most beautiful girl in Lipce,’ but also that she had a mixture of girlish carefreeness, sex appeal and feistiness. And this is what we saw in Kamila Urzędowska.”

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