Yellow Letters by İlker Çatak was awarded the Golden Bear for best film at the Berlin International Film Festival’s closing night ceremony tonight (February 21), which saw several speeches tackle political issues.
Scroll down for full list of winners
Yellow Letters is Catak’s follow-up to his Oscar-nominated The Teacher’s Lounge. It follows a left-leaning Turkish couple who find their comfortable life in Ankara under increasing pressure when they draw the unwelcome attention of the state. Be For Films is handling sales. This is the first time in 22 years that a film from Germany has taken the top award at the Berlinale (after Fatih Akin won for Head-On in 2004).
“This is a movie that speaks up very clearly about the political language of totalitarianism as opposed to the empathetic language of cinema,” jury president Wim Wenders said of the film.
“We saw your film as a terrifying premonition, a look into the near future that could possibly happen in our countries as well. It got under the skin of all us who see the signs of despotism in their country or their neighbourhood. This film will be understood worldwide, I promise you, even if it doesn’t put names to places and people - we know who they are.”
Turkey’s Emin Alper was presented with the grand jury prize for Salvation, about a violent clan feud in the Turkish mountains. During his speech, Alper said “you are not alone” about the Palestinians, Iranians and the Kurds in Rojava, before mentioning those imprisoned in his home country as part of Erdogan’s ongoing crackdown against opposition figures.
The jury prize went to US director Lance Hammer for his second feature Queen At Sea, which also saw the best supporting performance award shared by Anna Calder-Marshall and Tom Courtenay. Juliette Binoche also stars in this London-set film that centres on an elderly couple affected by the woman’s dementia.
The best leading performance prize went to Sandra Hüller for her title role in Markus Schleinzer’s Rose. This marks the second time she has won a Silver Bear, after being honoured in 2006 for Requiem. 17th-century drama Rose sees Huller play an enigmatic soldier who returns to a secluded German village and claims to be the heir of a long-abandoned farmstead, all the while pretending to be a man.
French Canadian Geneviève Dulude-de Celles won best screenplay for her second feature film Nina Roza.
Other awards handed out by the international jury headed included best director to Grant Gee for his fiction feature debut Everybody Digs Bill Evans, and the outstanding artistic contribution to the documentary Yo (Love Is a Rebellious Bird) by Anna Fitch and Banker White.
Pepa Lubojacki’s If Pigeons Turned To Gold was presented with the €40,000 Berlinale documentary award.
The second edition of the Perspectives competition for debut fiction, with a cash prize of €50,000, was won by the Palestinian-Syrian director Abdallah Alkhatib for Chronicles From The Siege.
Accepting the award the Palestinian-Syrian director said: “Somebody told me that you should be careful before you say what I want to say now because you are a refugee in Germany and there are so many red lines, but I don’t care, I care about my people in Palestine,” before then saying that the German government is “partners of the genocide in Gaza by Israel. I believe you are intelligent enough to recognise this truth but you choose to not care.”
Tricia Tuttle, Wim Wenders comments
On stage, Tricia Tuttle reflected on her second edition as festival director, which has been criticised for comments made by Wenders and the festival’s perceived stance on Gaza.
She said: “This Berlinale has taken place in a world that feels raw and fractured. Many people arrived carrying a lot of grief and urgency about the world we are living in right now that takes place outside of the cinemas’ walls as well as inside the cinemas. These feelings are really real and they belong in our community.”
“We’ve also been publicly challenged this year and that’s good because it means that the Berlinale matters to people,” she continued. “We respect people speaking out because it takes a lot of courage sometimes. We don’t always agree with every claim that is made about us, but what I am really proud of is that, over these 10 days, the Berlinale has remained what it set out to be which is a place where people gather in public and everyone is welcome to sit in the dark and look at the world through the eyes of other people.”
“If this Berlinale has been emotionally charged, that’s not a failure of the Berlinale and it’s not a failure of cinema. It’s the Berlinale doing its job and it’s cinema doing its job.”
In a moment quite unprecedented for the Berlinale’s closing ceremony, Wenders took out a folder to read out a prepared speech lasting almost seven minutes that could be seen as a response to the criticisms levelled at him since the jury press conference at the beginning of the festival.
“The language of cinema is empathetic, the language of social media is affective. We need to talk about that artificial discrepancy that happens here in Berlin,” he said. “Activists are mainly fighting on the internet for humanitarian causes, namely the dignity and protection of human life - these are our causes as well, as the Berlinale films clearly show.”
“If we treat each other as allies, as different but complementary languages, our shared causes have a better chance to resist the ever changing wind of consumption, abstraction and over-saturation.”
Full list of winners
Competition
- Golden Bear for Best Film - Yellow Letters by İlker Çatak
- Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize - Salvation by Emin Alper
- Silver Bear Jury Prize - Queen At Sea by Lance Hammer
- Silver Bear for Best Director – Grant Gee for Everybody Digs Bill Evans
- Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance – Sandra Huller for Rose
- Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance - Anna Calder-Marshall and Tom Courtenay for Queen At Sea
- Silver Bear for Best Screenplay - Geneviève Dulude-De Celles for Nina Roza
- Silver Bear for an Outstanding Artistic Contribution – Yo (Love is a Rebellious Bird) by Anna Fitch and Banker White
Perspectives
- Best First Feature - Chronicles From the Siege by Abdallah Alkhatib
- Special mention - Forest High by Manon Coubia
Berlinale Documentary Award
- If Pigeons Turned To Gold by Pepa Lubojacki
- Special mentions: Tutu by Sam Pollard; Sometimes I Imagine Them All At A Party by Daniela Magnani Hüller
Generation
14plus
- Youth Jury Crystal Bear - Sad Girlz by Fernanda Tovar
- International Jury Grand Prix - Sad Girlz by Fernanda Tovar
Kplus
- Children’s Jury Crystal Bear - Gugu’s World by Allan Deberton
- International Jury Grand Prix - Gugu’s World by Allan Deberton
GWFF Best First Feature Award
- Chronicles from the Siege by Abdallah AlKhatib
Other awards
Teddy Awards
- Best Feature Film - Iván & Hadoum by Ian de la Rosa
- Best Documentary Film - Barbara Forever by Brydie O’Connor
- Best Short Film - Taxi Moto by Gael Kamilindi
- Jury Award - Trial of Hein by Kai Stänicke
- Special Teddy Award - Céline Sciamma
Prizes of the ecumenical jury
- Competition - Flies by Fernando Eimbcke
- Panorama - Bucks Harbor by Pete Muller
- Forum - River Dreams
Prizes of the Fipresci jury
- Competition - Soumsou, the Night of the Stars by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun
- Perspectives - Animol by Ashley Walters
- Panorama - Narciso by Marcelo Martinessi
- Forum - AnyMart by Yusuke Iwasaki
Europa Cinemas Label
- Four Minus Three by Adrian Goiginger
Cicae Art Cinema Award
- Panorama - Prosecution by Faraz Shariat
- Forum - On Our Own by Tudor Cristian Jurgiu
Guild Film Prize
- Yellow Letters by İlker Çatak
Amnesty International Film Award
- What Will I Become? by Lexie Bean and Logan Rozos
Caligari Film Prize
- If Pigeons Turned To Gold by Pepa Lubojacki
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