Clooney: US Not Taking In Enough Refugees

George Clooney has told Sky News that the US is not taking in enough refugees and must "do more" to help alleviate the crisis in Europe.

He spoke to Sky at the premiere of Hail, Caesar! at the Berlin film festival on Thursday, before meeting Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel, to discuss what more can be done by both the US and Hollywood.

"The US needs to do more as we know, taking 10,000 refugees a year is not enough, that's clear," he said.

Clooney, and his wife Amal, met Ms Merkel on Friday morning where their discussions focused on "refugee policies and their involvement in the" aid group International Rescue Committee.

Former British foreign secretary David Miliband, who now heads the IRC, said afterwards that they had discussed what countries around the world could do to solve "what is a global problem, not just a Syrian problem or a German issue".

America has committed to accepting 10,000 Syrians this year and 85,000 refugees in total.

Refugees play a central role on and off screen at this year's festival, in a city which has seen 80,000 refugees arrive in the last year and more than a million in Germany as a whole.

When the festival was set up in 1951 there were millions of refugees and displaced people across Europe, and so from the beginning its aim was to contribute to a better understanding between nations and cultures.

Dieter Kosslick, the festival's director, said Germany felt a responsibility to do more because of its history.

"The red carpet is not just about glitz and shine, it also has something to do with responsibility .... We are in Berlin, a very specific city in history, it has to be much more acceptable in Germany to have refugees because we have a bad history."

There are more than a dozen films in the festival programme which focus on people fleeing from war and oppression.

Berlin's biggest refugee camp is at the former Templhof airport.

Built by Hitler as the gateway to Nazi Germany, more than 2,000 people are now living in its huge aircraft carriers.

Many have travelled for weeks with young children from Syria, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan.

This year's festival will organise donations to charities working with refugees, as well as supplying some with tickets to film screenings.

Angela Meyenburg, from charity KulturLeben, said she hoped refugees would enjoy the festival "to forget for some two or three hours the things you're always thinking on, or to have fun for a little while and to relax".