Isabelle Huppert brings ‘The Blood Countess’ to Berlin

Across more than five decades and well over a hundred films, Isabelle Huppert has built a reputation for transformation. Yet beyond the shifting roles and genres, one constant quietly threads through her career: Berlin.

The city and its festival culture have remained a recurring stage where Isabelle Huppert’s range has been tested, celebrated and reshaped.

Her relationship with the Berlin International Film Festival dates back to the early 1970s, when one of her first screen appearances was presented there. Since then, Isabelle Huppert has returned repeatedly, sometimes with daring dramas, sometimes with comedies, always expanding her screen identity.

Films such as 8 Women brought recognition for ensemble performance, while appearances in Things to Come and The Nun demonstrated her ability to balance emotional restraint with irony and wit.

Now Isabelle Huppert arrives again with The Blood Countess, directed by Ulrike Ottinger, portraying the notorious Elizabeth Báthory in a stylised, theatrical narrative that embraces excess without abandoning craft.

The project aligns with the kind of risk-taking work Berlin audiences have long supported in Huppert’s filmography, reinforcing how closely her artistic instincts mirror the festival’s appetite for experimentation.

Off-screen, legendary French actors’ engagement with the city extends into theatre, where demanding productions helped refine the still, controlled presence she carries into film. That stage discipline fed into the performances Berlin would come to recognise, intense yet measured, austere yet quietly expressive.

The connection has not gone unnoticed. In 2022, Isabelle Huppert was honoured with the festival’s lifetime Golden Bear, formalising a bond shaped by decades of premieres, performances and artistic exchange.

For Isabelle Huppert, Berlin has never been just another venue on the international circuit. It has functioned as a creative partner, a place where her work evolves, returns, and finds renewed context, ensuring that Isabelle Huppert’s long dialogue with the city continues well into the present.