Tilda Swinton talks acting break and attending Berlinale amid boycott calls

Tilda Swinton is planning to take a break from acting after her trip to the Berlin Film Festival, which comes amid calls to boycott the festival.

Tilda spoke about her plans and the reason she’s attending the Berlin Film Festival despite respecting the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).

The Oscar winner shared: “I need a break, and I’m going to have one. We all know filmmaking is a merciless mistress and I have been under the lash for a while.”

She continued: “When I go home to Scotland on Monday, I am entering something that I have been looking forward to for 15 years, which is a period of my life when I do something different. I can’t quite say what it is, but I can say I’m not shooting a film for the rest of this year.”

“Things have got a little crazy,” she remarked.

“In the olden days — ‘BC’, before Covid — people used to say, ‘We think we’ve got the money to make an independent film,’ and we would just say, ‘Can we just hold another nine months to develop something?’ and people would very often say, ‘okay,'” recalled Swinton. “Since Covid, that has been, ‘No, the money is here now and have to do it.’ That feeling of smash and grab, and the insecurity about finance, has been really strenuous for us all. I need a break, so I am going to have one.”

After receiving the Honorary Golden Bear from Berlinale, she explained why she attended the festival: “I’m a great admirer of and have a great deal of respect for BDS and I think about it a lot."

“I decided it was more important for me to come. I was given a platform, which I decided in a personal moment was potentially more useful to all our causes than me not turning up. It was a judgment call that I take full responsibility for,” Swinton added.