Fire at Sea by Gianfranco Rosi, Italy, won a well-deserved Golden Bear, the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury, and the International Amnesty Prize. It is a non-fiction drama about the life on a south-Italian island Lampedusa, which over the past few years has become a transition point for hundreds of thousands of migrants from the countries of North Africa and Near East. For Rosi this is the second high award of a film festival of the categoryA – in 2013 his Holy Grail won a Golden Lion in Venice.
The grand-prix and the prize of the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) went to Death in Sarajevo by Bosnian Danis Tanovic (he won an Oscar in 2002 for No Man’s Land). There is no doubt that the content of this film will be remembered – the author managed to combine the historian aspects (causes and effects of the Balkan wars), and the class conflict, and a thrilling plot (element of a criminal thriller); besides, it mentions Ukraine – one of the heroes compares our situation with the situation in Bosnia. He considers that like West in its time gave Bosnians for the mercy of Milosevic, it is leaving Ukraine face to face with Putin: this is a quotation from a monologue-play Hotel Europe by French philosopher and political writer Bernard-Henri Levy. However, as a film critic I cannot but note that the work of the actors and the directors could have been better.
There was another absolutely predictable decision – the Best First Feature Award went to Tunisian Mohamed Ben Attia for his social drama Inhebbek Hedi. Correspondingly the leading actor Majd Mastoura won the Silver Bear for best actor. Trine Dyrholm was named the best actress for the leading role in Thomas Vinterberg’s The Commune, a psychological drama which was not remarkable otherwise.
Of course, Alfred Bauer Prize for a feature film that opens new perspectives on cinematic art could not but go to A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery, a 485-minute-long black-and-white epos about the anti-Spanish revolution in the Philippines (directed by Lav Diaz).
A well-deserved Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution went to Mark Lee Ping Bing, the cameraman of Crosscurrent (Yang Chao, China) – a meditative and visually exquisite fairytale.
Only the decisions concerning the best director and script writer were surprising: correspondingly, they went to Mia Hansen-Love for the pseudo-intellectual and plain Things to Come (France) and Tomasz Wasilewski for the mediocre United States of Love (Poland).
However, in the best categories the jury headed by Meryl Streep didn’t sin against cinematography. So, we can summarize that the results of the festival are more or less satisfactory.
Read a more detailed review of the Berlinale results in the following issues of The Day.
