‘Synonyms’ wins top prize at Berlin Film Fest
BERLIN: BER Israeli director Nadav Lapid’s “Synonyms,” a movie about a you young Israeli man who uproots himself to France and is determined to put his homeland behind him, won the Berlin International Film Festival’s val’s top Golden Bear award on Saturday (Sunday in Manila). A jury headed by French actress Juliette Bino Binoche chose the movie from a field of 16 com competing at the first of the year’s major Euro European film festivals. Set in Paris, it stars Tom Mercier in the role of Yoav, who refuses to speak Hebrew and is accompanied com by an ever-present French dictionary as he tries to put down root roots and create a new identity for himself.
L Lapid said as he accepted the award that some in Israel might be ““scandalized” by the movie “but for me, the film is also a big cel celebration — a celebration, I hope, also of cinema.”
“I hope that people will understand that fury and rage and ho hostility and hate ... are only the twin brothers and sisters of strong at attachment and powerful emotions,” he said.
The festival’s best actor and best actress awards went to Wang Ji Jingchun and Yong Mei, respectively, for their roles as a couple who lo lose their son in director Wang Xiaoshuai’s “So Long, My Son.” The three-hour Chinese family saga spans three decades of history from the 1980s to the present, portraying a society in constant change.
The best director honors went to Germany’s Angela Schanelec for her family drama “I Was at Home, But.”
The festival’s jury grand prize award was won by French director Francois Ozon’s “By the Grace of God,” a movie about the long-term effects of sexual abuse in the Catholic church.
Italian anti-Mafia journalist Roberto Saviano, along with Maurizio Braucci and Claudio Giovannesi, took the best script award for “Piranhas,” a film following teenagers growing up in a dangerous world of crime in Naples. Saviano said writing the screenplay was meant to “show resistance,” and added that “speaking the truth in our country has become very complex.”
This year’s competition originally comprised 17 films, but famed Chinese director Zhang Yimou’s “One Second,” set amid the chaos and violence of the country’s 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, was withdrawn after festival started.
A festival statement on Monday said it wasn’t possible to present it “due to technical difficulties encountered during post-production.”