A PORTRAIT OF ACTOR & EUROPEAN SHOOTING STAR 2026 ENNO TREBS

Being honoured as a European Shooting Star at the Berlinale is special for Enno Trebs because of his biography alone. Having grown up in the Berlin area, the actor born in 1995 remembers that he was familiar from an early age, not only with the bear logo emblazoned on posters and bags, but also with the significance of the festival. We met over a cup of coffee, watching tourists hurrying through the cold of the capital’s city centre. He is even more delighted about something else, though, and he emphasises: “This is not just a prize; far more, it is a programme that stands for European solidarity, diversity and cooperation. Being appreciated in that context is really cool.”.

Ideal though he may be as a shooting star, Trebs is not a true newcomer. He discovered acting as a child, rather by chance – and at the age of 12 he appeared on camera with his older brother Theo in Michael Haneke’s THE WHITE RIBBON, followed soon afterwards by roles in award-winning films such as POLL by Chris Kraus and Philip Koch’s PICCO. It was exciting to travel to Cannes as a teenager with some of the other ‘film children’ in Haneke’s entourage, Trebs tells me, and all the more meaningful to return to the Croisette 16 years later with MIROIRS NO. 3 in 2025. These days, he has become almost a regular actor for Christian Petzold: after a small appearance in UNDINE, he was also part of the cast in AFIRE.

“Even as a child, I was impressed by Haneke’s clarity. He always followed a very exact plan, knew just where the camera should be positioned; he never had to fiddle around and try things out first. That was an extremely useful first experience,” Trebs reports. He acknowledges that Petzold’s vision is equally rigorous, albeit with a different approach: “His way of working is extremely pleasant for the actors precisely because he takes plenty of time to try things out. Filming is always incredibly stressful, but it never is with him. It’s a huge privilege to be able to perform under such conditions.”

When asked how he would describe his own vision at work, the actor, who has also appeared in front of the camera for Burhan Qurbani, Sabrina Sarabi and Hans-Christian Schmid, does not take long to answer. “I’m all in favour of tak­ing the audience seriously. The less a film explains and the more it relies on subversiveness and the subliminal, the more fascinating I will find the story,” he explains. ‘When a director develops emotionality in a clever, subtle way rather than through grand gestures, I appreciate it more. I don’t think crying is necessarily the best way to show that something is sad. I find that boring and too simplistic.”

Trebs, who will soon be appearing in Pawel Pawlikowski’s 1949, never makes things too easy for himself, preferring instead to seek out fresh challenges constantly. Among other things, he has been teaching young colleagues once a year for several months at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts, where he himself studied from 2016 to 2020. And in his new film, ECHO OF TOMORROW‘S WAR by Nicolas Ehret, he plays the undisputed leading role on screen for the first time.

“I’ve really enjoyed playing supporting roles to date – because when you’re not the focus, you can be more inventive and work towards the world you’re trying to portray. But I have had a completely different experience with ECHO OF TOMORROW‘S WAR,” says the 30-year-old, referring to the film in which he plays a young man attempting to evade the conscription reintroduced in a Germany ruled by right-wing populists and threatened by war. “Suddenly, I realised that as lead actor, every decision I make has an impact on where the story goes. And when you play a character twelve hours a day, Monday to Friday, for weeks on end, you can’t help but absorb some of that character.” He emphasises that this experience of carrying the film as the protagonist was new and exciting. But it goes without saying that it won’t be the last time he does so, and not just since he was selected as a European Shooting Star.

Patrick Heidmann