Norwegian drama “Dreams” won the top prize at the Berlin film festival on Saturday, while Australia’s Rose Byrne clinched the Best Performance award, with both movies focused on women’s experiences.
At a glitzy ceremony in the German capital, politics featured but never overshadowed the films themselves, fitting the pattern of the last 10 days of the 75th Berlinale.
With Germany set to go to the polls on Sunday and Donald Trump making waves at the start of his second term as US president, some directors made openly political statements but the big winners largely avoided controversy.
“Dreams” is a playful coming-of-age story set in Oslo that centres on Johanne, a 17-year-old pupil who develops a crush on her female teacher.
“This was beyond my wildest dreams,” director Dag Johan Haugerud, 60, said as he picked up his first major international prize from the jury president, American director Todd Haynes.
Hailed by critics for its touching drama and dry humour, “Dreams” is the third film in a trilogy that includes “Sex” and “Love”.
Byrne, best known for her roles in the “Damages” TV series and “X Men” films, plays an exhausted therapist and mother whose life spirals out of control in “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”.
The claustrophobic US-made drama, written and directed by Mary Bronstein, premiered last month at the Sundance festival where speculation began that Byrne might be in with a shot at the Oscars next year.
“Thank you so much, I’m so flattered to even be here,” she told the ceremony.
“If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” was one of the more star-heavy entries at this year’s Berlinale, with former late-night TV host Conan O’Brien and rapper A$AP Rocky in supporting roles.
– Women in film –
The official competition of 19 films and documentaries — the first under new festival director Tricia Tuttle — had a prominent focus on women.
“We were so impressed by the fact that among the competition films, there were so many films where women were behind and in front of the camera telling stories about women’s lives and their experiences,” Haynes told the ceremony.
After speaking out strongly against Trump last week, he opted simply to note the “tremendous seriousness” of the moment, with the far-right AfD party set to make gains in Sunday’s German election.
Tuttle had been hoping to avoid major controversy this year after the festival was drawn into a heated political debate last year when several directors spoke out against Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
That lead to accusations of bias from German politicians, including the mayor of Berlin and the government.
References to Israel were largely implied, rather than explicit, on Saturday.
Meryam Joobeur, a Canadian-Tunisia director and member the jury that awarded the secondary Panorama prize, urged the audience to remember the “sacred duty to children”.
“We’ve seen the annihilation of thousands of children dismissed as mere collateral damage by political and journalistic forces,” she said.
Romanian director Radu Jude, who picked up the best screenplay award, did not mince his words.
He joked that next year’s festival might be opened with a projection of a film by infamous Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl — a reference to the possibility of the AfD coming to power in Germany.
“I hope the International Criminal Court in Hague will pursue its job against all these murderous bastards,” he added, referring to the court’s charges against Hamas and Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Other big winners on Saturday included Irish actor Andrew Scott who picked up the prize for best supporting actor in Richard Linklater’s “Blue Moon”.
After “Dreams”, which won the Golden Bear, the Brazilian film “The Blue Trail” about elderly people being confined to camps won the Silver Bear.
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