The Berlin International Film Festival is opening Thursday with a new movie from French director Francois Ozon and a pared-down format designed to bring audiences back but reduce COVID-19 infection risks.
The first of the year's major European film festivals last took place in its regular format in 2020, just before the pandemic hit. Last year, it was split in two — with a largely online version held in March and an event with screenings for the public in June.
This time, the "Berlinale" is returning to something a bit more like normal, although the omicron variant is still pushing coronavirus infection rates to new daily records in Germany, and numerous restrictions remain in place.
"We have developed a very reduced format, in consultation with health authorities here in Berlin," the festival's executive director, Mariette Rissenbeek, told Deutschlandfunk radio. The festival's main business has been reduced to seven days, with four days at the end reserved for repeat public screenings.
Cinemas will only be half-filled, and movie-goers will be required to show proof of vaccination or recent recovery from COVID-19, as well as a booster shot or a negative test. And they will have to come to screenings with masks.
The festival is opening with a world premiere of Ozon's "Peter von Kant," the first of 18 films competing for the event's top Golden Bear award. A seven-member international jury led by American filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan plans to announce the winners of that and other prizes on Feb. 16.
German government spokesman Wolfgang Buechner said last week that the festival going ahead despite the pandemic is "a courageous step" and a signal to the cultural sector that "we won't let corona get us down."
Amazon’s $4 billion partnership with AI startup Anthropic gets UK competition clearance
Britain's competition watchdog said Friday that it's clearing Amazon's partnership with artificial intelligence company Anthropic because the $4 billion deal didn't qualify for further scrutiny.
The Competition and Markets Authority approval comes after it started looking into the deal, part of wider global scrutiny for the wave of investment from Big Tech companies into leading startups working on generative AI technology.
The watchdog found that San Francisco-based Anthropic's revenue and its combined market share with Amazon in Britain were not big enough to require an in-depth investigation under the country's merger rules.
"We welcome the UK's Competition and Markets Authority decision acknowledging its lack of jurisdiction regarding this collaboration," Amazon said in a statement. "By investing in Anthropic, we're helping to spur entry and competition in generative AI."
Under the deal, Anthropic is using Amazon Web Services as its primary cloud provider and Amazon's custom chips to build, train and deploy its AI models.
The British regulator has previously cleared Microsoft's partnership with French startup Mistral AI as well as its hiring of key staff from another startup, Inflection AI.
The watchdog is still scrutinizing a partnership between Anthropic and Google. Anthropic was founded in 2021 by siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, who previously worked at ChatGPT maker OpenAI. The company has focused heavily on increasing the safety and reliability of AI models.
The AI deals are also facing scrutiny across the Atlantic, where the Federal Trade Commission is looking into whether they're helping tech giants gain an unfair advantage in the booming market for AI services.
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