The top prize at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival was awarded to French filmmaker Mati Diop’s documentary “Dahomey,” which focuses on 26 looted works of art that were returned to Benin from France in 2021. was.
This unconventional feature is narrated in part by the gravelly imaginary voice of one of the works of art, which playfully explores the interplay between the legacy of colonialism and the history and identity of present-day Benin. doing. This is Diop’s first feature film since “Atlantics,” a drama about Senegalese immigrants that won the Grand Prix at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival.
In his acceptance speech for the award, known as the Golden Bear, Diop said it was part of the “crumbling wall of silence” surrounding the need to return art looted by colonial powers to their original owners. He said it was “Dahomey”. “We can remove our past as a burden of incarceration, or we can take responsibility for it,” she said.
This year’s jury includes Mexican-Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong’o as the president of the jury, as well as German director Christian Petzold, whose film Afire won the runner-up at last year’s Berlin Film Festival, and Spanish director Albert Serra. Participated.
This year’s runner-up award went to prolific Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo’s A Traveler’s Needs, which also won the award in three of the event’s previous five editions. His typically modest film stars Isabelle Huppert as an eccentric French woman he meets in Seoul.
The Special Jury Prize went to The Empire, director Bruno Dumont’s critically acclaimed and visually extravagant satire of Star Wars, set in a French coastal town. Ta.
The award for best director went to Nelson Carlos de los Santos Arias for “Pepe,” one of the festival’s strangest films about drug lord Pablo Escobar’s former pet hippo. It was done. The award for best gender-neutral performance went to actor Sebastian Stan for his role in “A Different Man,” in which he plays a man who undergoes facial surgery.
The Silver Bear for Best Original Screenplay went to German screenwriter and director Matthias Glasner for “Dying,” a drama about a family dealing with the death of a parent. The Best Supporting Actress award went to Emily Watson, who played an evil Irish nun in Small Things Like These.
This year’s festival, known as Berlinale in Germany, is the last festival headed by Mariette Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian, who took over in 2019 with the aim of raising the festival’s profile. Much of the discussion surrounding this event centers on whether they accomplished their mission.
The competition lineup blended Berlinale mainstays such as Sanz and German director Andreas Dresen with more difficult and overtly political films from countries such as Iran. However, many critics complained that the lineup was uneven and lacked boldness compared to previous years. Midway through the festival, Suddeutsche Zeitung’s Susan Vahabzadeh wrote in German that “the density of truly successful films was not very high.”
Some complained that the event lacked star power, despite appearances by Adam Sandler and Kristen Stewart. Critic Jessica Kiang wrote in the New York Times that the festival had “rarely felt so fraught, so uncertain, so unsure of itself.”
This puts the life of American Tricia Tuttle, who previously headed the London Film Festival and will take over the reins of the Berlinale, the world’s largest film festival by audience, in April, at stake. In addition to attracting her top-level talent, she must navigate the festival in a treacherous financial and political climate.
At a press conference announcing his appointment in December, Tuttle said his goal was to strike a balance between “established filmmakers” and “underrepresented voices,” but he said his goal was to strike a balance between “established filmmakers” and “underrepresented voices,” but the Berlinale is facing He said the difficulties he is facing are not unique. “The last few years have been challenging for all festivals,” she said.
