Love story wins award

Hungary’s On Body and Soul, a tender love story set in a slaughterhouse, won the Golden Bear top prize on Saturday at the Berlin film festival, Europe’s first major cinema showcase of the year.

The drama by Ildiko Enyedi, one of four female filmmakers in the competition, features graphic scenes in an abattoir set against the budding romance of two people who share a recurring dream.

The win marked an upset at the 11-day Berlinale, where a European refugee comedy by cult Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismaki, The Other Side of Hope, had been the odds-on favourite.

Kaurismaki took the Silver Bear for best director.

Enyedi thanked the festival for embracing her first full-length feature in 18 years but said working conditions in Hungary were growing more difficult under Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

“We live in a more and more absurd country, frighteningly absurd country,” she said, adding that the state film fund served as a “sort of island”.

The runner-up jury prize went to Franco-Senegalese filmmaker Alain Gomis for Felicite about a Kinshasa nightclub singer who has to scrape together funds to pay for her son’s treatment after a serious road accident.

South Korea’s Kim Min-Hee won the best actress award and Austria’s Georg Friedrich scooped the prize for best actor. – AFP

We live in a more and more absurd country. Ildiko Enyedi Female filmmaker