Warwick Thornton had multiple appearances at Berlinale 2026. The legendary director and cinematographer was on the red carpet with Wolfram and over at Berlinale Talents he treated an industry audience to an intimate chat about how filmmaking begins before cinema, in memory.
He started with history, a First Nations one. The Alice Springsâborn filmmaker began as a cinematographer, before directing Samson and Delilah, which won the CamĂŠra dâOr at Cannes and did much to shift the global gaze toward contemporary Indigenous storytelling. He followed with Sweet Country, awarded in Venice and which cemented his reputation for spare, unsentimental filmmaking rooted in landscape and lived experience.
Politics and film was a heated debate at the 2026 Berlinale, and when asked about it, his response showed the world he was smart, and funny.
âOur family â we have lived through two hundred years of colonisation, murder, rape, poisoning, genocide, the Stolen Generations â everyone trying to breed the black out of us,â he said.Â
âWe exist as a political statement. Not because we wave flags or try to control a narrative. We just are. Our presence is the statement. We donât need to explain ourselves. Just living is enough. That survival â thatâs the story. Resistance, love, endurance. Sometimes I watch the ending of Wolfram, and it makes me cry. Not because itâs sad, but because it exists. And you know what, maybe this is this black fella humour in me, but Australia gives me money for me to make films, and I make films  about how messed up the country was; as I said, the genocide, the stolen generations. And they still let me back in and they keep giving me more money. To tell our truth. I mean how good is that?”
He went on to talk about collaborating with writer David Tranter as an act of translation â from memory to cinema.
âDavid remembers everything,â Thornton said. âStories from his mother, his grandmother â who worked for who, who was stolen, where people came from. That oral history lives inside him.â
âI canât remember anything,” he said, “about my grandmother. Nothing. So hearing David hold those memories â that was empowering. Indigenous culture carried history through memory, not writing. So when he turns memory into a script, and that script becomes a film⌠thatâs a really beautiful transition.â
For Thornton, cinema is simply another stage of storytelling tradition.
âThe film isnât invention,â he said. âItâs continuation.â
He describes their process as unusual: the ideas already exist â his job is to access them.
âDavid has the brain full of stories,â he said. âMy role is getting inside that brain and putting it on the page. Then once itâs written, we can shape character and structure.â
They go through multiple drafts. The film evolves collectively â actors and producers also reshape it.
âBut the core stays the same,â Thornton said. âWeâre not making plot. Weâre revealing something that already lives. Sometimes I refuse to read early drafts. I donât want to intellectualise it too early. I want instinct first.â
After Sweet Country, which he called âbrutal by design,â Thornton wanted a different emotional experience.
âWith that Sweet Country, the audience leaves wounded,â he said. âThis one Wolfram â I wanted redemption. I wanted them to breathe.â
The change affects every creative choice â pacing, performance, even framing.
âI donât want punishment cinema,â he said. âI want recognition cinema.â
Thornton is deeply suspicious of film scores.
âMusic manipulates,â he said. âIt tells the audience what to feel. Sad music â okay now you cry. Happy music â now you relax. Thatâs cheating.â
In Sweet Country, he removed music almost entirely.
âThe script was already hard. Adding music would have softened responsibility. So we used atmosphere â wind, sand, insects â as the score. Country was singing.â
He describes sound design as emotional truth.
âIf you sit in the desert, itâs never silent. Birds, crickets, air through trees. Thatâs ceremony. Thatâs real emotion.â
His filmmaking rule is simple: if the scene works, it doesnât need music.
âI try to get strength from actors, composition, camera movement, blocking. If the scene fails â then music comes in to rescue it. So I avoid using it.â
He laughs at himself.
âIâm stubborn. Iâll hurt the film to prove I donât need music.â
Then something changed during the making of Wolfram; he realised the story wanted music â not decoration, but release.
âI had to stop forcing my rules on the film,â he says. âSometimes the director isnât in charge. The story is.â
Composer and musician Charlie who Thorton said plays live instruments with particularly soulful tonal textures presented early pieces.
âShe played something and it felt right immediately. Not emotional manipulation â emotional permission.â
The difference mattered, and he describes music entering only after the film earns it and with the primary score remaining environmental.
âIt didnât tell the audience what to feel. It let them feel. You hold back the score so when it arrives, itâs relief. Like breath after tension,” he said. “Thereâs already music â wind, birds, insects. Country singing. The composed score only joins that choir.â
For Thornton, sound design is cinematography for the ears.
âYou donât layer emotion on top of the land. The land already carries emotion.â
Thornton frames images as acts of respect rather than control. He avoids coverage that explains, prefers stillness, and believes composition comes from relationship to space.
âI donât shoot to show off shots. I shoot to observe behaviour. The audience should discover, not be guided. If you move the camera too much you start telling the audience how to think. People belong to landscape. You frame them within it â not dominating it.â
He describes a moment during editing when he realised ego interferes with storytelling, and he calls directing an act of surrender.
âI kept saying âI want thisâ. Then I realised â the film doesnât want that. Youâre not building the film. Youâre listening to it.â
Ultimately, Thornton wants recognition â not education, not guilt. He rejects the idea that such films must justify themselves politically.
âWeâre not explaining Indigenous existence. Weâre showing life. Our presence is political. The film doesnât need speeches. If the audience feels something true, they learn more than any lecture.â
He then returned to memory again, and how for Thornton film is a cultural technology â not Western, not Indigenous â simply the latest storytelling tool. In the end, Thornton describes filmmaking as preservation.
âWhat weâre doing is not new. Weâre just continuing oral storytelling using cameras,” he said.”The medium changes. The responsibility doesnât. Stories disappear when memory disappears. Film holds them so the next generation doesnât start from silence.â
And that brings him back to survival.
âThis isnât tragedy cinema. Itâs survival cinema. Love cinema.â
âIf people walk out feeling human â thatâs success.â
Berlinale Talents is part of Berlinale Pro, which unites the European Film Market, the Berlinale Co-Production Market, Berlinale Talents and the World Cinema Fund. Berlinale Pro is the festivalâs full-circle industry infrastructure that serves the global film industry as incubator, enhancer and supporter in all stages of film development, production, sales and distribution.
