After drawing social media backlash for suggesting filmmakers should “stay out of politics,” German director Wim Wenders and his fellow jurors on the 76th Berlin Film Festival delivered a pointed rebuttal of sorts, awarding the festival’s top prizes to various overtly political movies.
Top prize, the Golden Bear for best film, went to Ilker Çatak’s Yellow Letters, a drama following Derya (Özgü Namal) and Aziz (Tansu Biçer), two Turkish theater artists who lose their jobs on account of political persecution from Turkey’s authoritarian government. Though set in Ankara and Istanbul, Yellow Letters is shot entirely in Germany, with Çatak making no effort to disguise the actual fact, hinting that what has happened in Ankara may occur in Berlin.
Awarding the Golden Bear, Wenders called Yellow Letters, a drama of “the political language of totalitarianism versus the empathetic language of cinema.”
Çatak is the primary German director to win the Golden Bear in Berlin since Fatih Akin. Akin, like Çatak a German-born director of Turkish immigrant parents, took the highest prize for Head-On in 2004.
The Silver Bear for best performance went to German star Sandra Hüller for her gender-bending turn in Rose, from Austrian director Markus Schleinzer, wherein she plays a girl attempting to pass as a person in seventeenth century rural Germany. The black-and-white feature was inspired by a whole bunch of comparable documented cases throughout history. It’s one other stand-out role for Hüller, who was Oscar-nominated for her turn in Anatomy of a Fall, and is about to make the leap to Hollywood, starring alongside Tom Cruise in Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s hotly anticipated dramedy Digger, and along with Ryan Gosling within the sci-fi feature Project Hail Mary from Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.
Hüller did a variation of the Adrien Brody/Halle Berry Oscar kiss, giving jury member Ewa Puszczyńska, her producer on Zone of Interest, a smooch on the lips before accepting her trophy.
The perfect supporting performance prize was awarded to British acting icons Anna Calder-Marshall and Tom Courtenay for taking part in an aging couple in Lance Hammer’s Queen at Sea. The drama, also featuring Juliette Binoche and Florence Hunt, sees Calder-Marshall playing a girl with severe dementia, with Courtenay playing her loving husband and caregiver. Queen at Sea also won the Silver Bear Jury Prize.
The awards ceremony of the 76th Berlin International Film Festival got off to politically-changed start, as several filmmakers used the stage to denounce Israeli military actions within the Middle East and call to “free Palestine.”
Opening the gala event, Berlinale director Tricia Tuttle acknowledged that this 12 months’s edition had “felt raw and fractured,” saying grief and anger over global events belonged throughout the festival community and that debate was a part of democracy. But as prizes were handed out, the political temperature rose. Lebanese filmmaker Marie-Rose Osta, accepting the Golden Bear for best short film for Someday a Child, condemned Israeli bombings and what she called a collapse of international law, while Abdallah Alkhatib, winning the Berlinale Documentary Award for Chronicles From a Siege, brought a Palestinian flag onstage and ended his speech with a call to “free Palestine.”
Syrian director Ameer Fakher Eldin, head of the short film jury, urged artists to “insist on complexity” and resist reducing festival spaces to parliamentary floors, arguing that direct statements and politically engaged bodies of labor could coexist. Wenders, largely silent for the reason that initial controversy, addressed what he called an “artificial discrepancy” between critics and organizers before announcing the competition winners, saying most of those within the room applauded the artists speaking out.
British filmmaker Grant Gee took best director honors for Everyone Digs Bill Evans, a fragmented bio-drama on the influential jazz pianist who was shattered by the tragic lack of his bassist in a automobile accident. Norwegian actor Anders Danielsen Lie (Sentimental Value) plays Bill Evans, with Laurie Metcalf and Bill Pullman as his parents.
The Silver Bear for best screenplay went to Nina Roza from Quebecois director Geneviève Dulude-de Celles, the story of a Bulgarian immigrant who returns to his place of birth to look for an 8-year-old artistic prodigy.
Anna Fitch’s formally experimental documentary Yo (Love Is a Rebellious Bird), wherein the director uses puppets, collages and scale models to recount the lifetime of her friend, the Swiss immigrant Yolanda “Yo” Shea, won the Silver Bear for extraordinary artistic achievement.
The Grand Jury Prize went to Emin Alper’s Salvation, a drama that charts the escalation of violence in an isolated village community within the Turkish mountains following the return of an exiled clan.
Alper used his speech to precise solidarity with oppressed people all over the place. “The people of Palestine, you usually are not alone. The people of Iran suffering under tyranny, you usually are not alone, the people of Kurdistan [you] usually are not alone,” he said. “And my people, you usually are not alone.”
But one of the crucial eloquent speeches on the difficulty of politics at this 12 months’s Berlinale got here from one among the producers of Yellow Letters. Calling out the arguments that had pitted “filmmaker against filmmaker, artist against creatives,” he reminded the gang that “we usually are not enemies. We’re allies. The true threat amongst us is just not amongst us. It’s the autocrats, the right-wing parties, the nihilists of our time. Allow us to not fight one another. Let’s fight them.”
Tricia Tuttle ended the night on an optimistic note, saying that “hope and love” were the common themes through all of the award speeches tonight. She welcomed the criticism of the festival, saying critics “just want us to be higher,” adding that “all are welcome” within the Berlinale community.
Full list of winner below.
GOLDEN BEAR FOR BEST FILM
Yellow Letters, dir. Ilker Çatak
SILVER BEAR GRAND JURY PRIZE
Salvation, dir. Emin Alper
SILVER BEAR JURY PRIZE
Queen at Sea, dir. Lance Hammer
SILVER BEAR FOR BEST DIRECTOR
Grant Gee, Everyone Digs Bill Evans
SILVER BEAR FOR BEST LEADING PERFORMANCE
Sandra Hüller, Rose
SILVER BEAR FOR BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE
Anna Calder-Marshall and Tom Courtenay, Queen at Sea
SILVER BEAR FOR BEST SCREENPLAY
Nina Roza, dir. Geneviève Dulude-de Celles
SILVER BEAR FOR OUTSTANDING ARTISTIC CONTRIBUTION
Yo (Love Is a Rebellious Bird), dir. Anna Fitch
PERSPECTIVES
GFF FIRST FEATURE AWARD
Chronicles From the Siege, dir. Abdallah Alkhatib
Special Mention
Forest High (Forêt Ivre), dir. Manon Coubia
BERLINALE DOCUMENTARY AWARD
If Pigeons Turned to Gold, dir. Pepa Lubojacki
SHORTS
Golden Bear Best Short Film
Someday a Child, dir. Marie-Rose Osta
Silver Bear Jury Prize (Short Film)
A Woman’s Place Is In every single place, dir. Fanny Texier
CUPRA Filmmaker Award
Jingkai Qu, dir. Kleptomania