Hard-hitting dramas take honours at Berlin festival
A critical drama about an Israeli expatriate in Paris wrestling with his identity, Synonyms, by director Nadav Lapid, won the Golden Bear top prize at the Berlin Film Festival on Saturday.
Lapid said the sexually explicit, semi-autobiographical movie, which deals with a young man who has fled Israel over its fraught political situation, might scandalise many in his home country.
“I hope that people will not look only at this film as a kind of harsh or radical political statement because it’s not,” he said after accepting the prize from jury president Juliette Binoche.
“It’s a human and existential and artistic statement. The film is also a celebration and a party, a celebration of cinema.”
The runner-up jury prize went to French filmmaker Francois Ozon for By the Grace of God, a wrenching drama based on real-life survivors of rampant sexual molestation in the Catholic church.
“The film tries to break the silence in powerful institutions,” he said.
Ozon said the film’s release in France, scheduled for next week, was facing a legal challenge, which he blasted as an attempt at censorship.
The stars of moving Chinese epic So Long, My Son, Wang Jingchun and Yong Mei, about the lasting impact of the country’s now abandoned one-child policy, shared the Silver Bear top acting prizes. “This is the tragedy of a woman, a family that loses its son,” Yong said.
Binoche had earlier expressed regret that another Chinese film, veteran Zhang Yimou’s One Second, was pulled from the competition reportedly due to official censorship.
“Zhang has been an essential voice in international cinema,” she said. “We need artists who help us make sense of history.”
German filmmaker Angela Schanelec won the best director prize for I Was At Home, But, a drama about a teenager who returns after a week-long disappearance to his mother, a grieving widow. –