Every once in a while, if you’re lucky and in the right spot at the right time, you get an interview that can stay with you a lifetime.

Eleven years ago while covering the Berlin Film Festival, I sat down with British director Anthony Minghella, who died in a London hospital on Tuesday at the age of 54.

His new film “The English Patient” was screening at the festival when news arrived that it had just picked up 12 Academy Award nominations. Minghella was obviously elated, especially because, as he explained, he had spent four years trying to get the film made that none of the major studios wanted to touch.

“The nominations are beyond any dream anyone is entitled to have,” he said with a wide smile. It was an interview in a Berlin hotel lobby that was supposed to be 10 minutes but ended up lasting nearly an hour — and has stayed with me ever since.

Minghella loved talking about his film. He was proud that his cast agreed to accept deferred salaries after the project was almost abandoned shortly after the start, and how everyone in Hollywood he approached for funding had turned him down.

“It was a very unpromising document: a European film about a man haunted from his war-time past, good actors but no stars and a director who had little experience,” said Minghella, an articulate man full of energy and ideas.

He was unlike any other director, producer or actor I have talked to before or since. At the time, in February 1997, he was 43 and just starting out as a filmmaker after being a lecturer at Hull University. He was so full of life and boundless enthusiasm.

“The English Patient” was, of course, a great film. But talking to Anthony Minghella about it was even better, an experience I’ll never forget.

A funny thing happens in Berlin each February during the Berlin Film Festival – the capital becomes a city of cinema fans and the Berlinale buzz can be felt from the Marlene-Dietrich-Platz in the heart of the festival district all the way out to the suburbs.

Even though Germans are becoming “Kinomuffel” (too lazy to go to the cinema) and hardly see films during the rest of the year (there were just 125 million cinema admission tickets sold  last year in a country of 82 million, down from 164 million in 2002), they can’t seem to get enough during the 10 days of the festival.

Screenings that ostensibly have nothing to do with the Berlinale pop up on the fringes of the festival as well — like last night when 1,400 people crowded into the Willy Brandt Haus, the headquarters of Germany’s Social Democrats, to see a film called “Die Welle” that will be released in March.
People looking for tickets — tickets to anything — are grateful for any screening they can get into, and made their way to the Willy Brandt Haus.

Even Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, fresh from a trip to Africa and just before flying off to Kiev, decided to spend the few hours of his lone evening back in Germany watching — and lauding — the German film that offers a surprising answer to the question: would it ever be possible to create another Nazi-style dictatorship in Germany?

“All you filmmakers and creative artists are some of the best ambassadors for Germany  anywhere in the world,” Steinmeier told the cast and big crowd before the film. “You’ve helped make the world curious about German culture and Germany.”

Steinmeier said the SPD had only been expecting a crowd of 500. “That 1,400 have come is overwhelming,” he said. “I didn’t want to miss it either.”

British actress Sally Hawkins plays what seems to be the happiest woman on earth in Mike Leigh’s comedy “Happy-Go-Lucky”, about a north London primary school teacher named Poppy who seems able to take every problem thrown at her in stride. Always smiling, always laughing, she lights up the screen and the gloomy world she lives in. The epitome of effervescence, she’s an irrepressibly optimistic 30-year-old woman with a contagious smile who tries to brighten up everyone who enters her orbit.

After spending two hours watching Hawkins, as Poppy, find the silver lining in every cloud, see every glass as half-full rather than half empty, and doing her best to coax a smile out of every crotchety, grumpy or surly soul she encountered, I was wondering: Is this person for real? Can anyone really be that happy all the time? As a natural-born pessimist weaned on scepticism and sarcasm, I’m a professional cynic incapable of overlooking the flaws in anything. So how can anyone be that happy?

So — and this is one of the best parts of covering film festivals like the Berlinale — I got the chance to ask Hawkins just a few minutes after the curtain went down: “Are you really such a bubbly, happy and optimistic person or are you just a good actress?”

“It’s all acting,” said Hawkins. “I’m a nightmare.”

But then she cracked up laughing before she added: “I guess I’m naturally optimistic as a person but Poppy is at another level. She’s all-embracing to everyone, she doesn’t give herself a hard time for anything. I hope I can take that with me, her incredible energy. I just couldn’t be tired or a bit down playing her. She was a joy to play.”

It was also a joy to watch her taking on all the mean, irritable, frustrated, unhappy and angry people. Even all the mean, irritable, frustrated, unhappy and angry journalists in the audience walked out with a smile.