Darren Aronofsky hails Berlin Film Festival's "incredible selection"

Speaking at the the closing gala, Aronofsky said: “Hats off to Dieter [Kosslick], the curators have made an incredible selection. It’s been incredibly difficult to decide on the prizes (…) there were so many quality films that it was hard not to award many, many of the films.“

In fact, the International Jury, which included actors Daniel Brühl and Audrey Tautou and the former Golden Bear winner Claudia Llosa from Peru, gave awards to nine of the 19 Competition titles by splitting two of the prizes, and showed the unanimity of its decisions by all being on stage together for the presentation of the awards in the Berlinale Palast.

Jafar Panahi’s Taxi became the second Iranian film in the Berlinale’s 65-year history to win the Golden Bear - after Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation in 2011 - and is Panahi’s second trophy from Berlin after he won the Silver Bear for Best Direction for Offside in 2006.

Limitations

„Limitations often inspire storytellers to make better work, but sometimes those limitations can be so suffocating they destroy a project and often damage the soul of the artist,“ Aronofsky said before announcing the top honour for Panahi.

„Instead of allowing his spirit to be crushed and giving up, instead of allowing himself to be filled with anger and frustration, Jafar Panahi wrote a love letter to cinema. His film is filled with love for his art, his community, his country and his audience,“ he continued.

While it might be an exaggeration to call Taxi „a cinematic masterpiece“ as some critics had done during the festival – the film had received the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize for Best Film in the Competition on Friday evening – there were other voices suggesting that the jury decision had been politically motivated at a festival which likes to fly its political colours particularly high.

In highlighting the importance of the right to artistic expression, it probably escaped the jury on Saturday evening that its decision was – ironically - coming on the same day as the 26^th anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeini issuing a fatwa against the author Salman Rushdie for The Satanic Verses on February 14, 1989.

Latin American success

Latin American cinema also reaped rewards at the 2015 Berlinale with three of the Silver Bears going to Chile and Guatemala.

Some eyebrows were raised at the Silver Bear for Best Script going to a documentary – to veteran Chilean director Patricio Guzmán’s The Pearl Button, while fellow Chilean Pablo Larraín received the Grand Jury Prize Silver Bear for The Club.

Producer Martha De Laurentiis said that Jayro Bustamente’s feature debut Ixcanul Volcano, the first film from Guatemala to ever feature in Berlin’s Competition, had „opened up our hearts“, but it was unclear how this favourite for the Golden Bear had also opened up „new perspectives in cinematic art“ to qualify for the Alfred Bauer Prize.

Among the decisions of the independent juries, the Ecumenical Jury gave its Competition film prize to Guzmán’s The Pearl Button, while two of the Teddy Awards went to Aldo Garay’s essay film The New Man from Uruguay/Chile and Chilean Omar Zúniga Hidalgo’s short San Cristobál; and Brazilian writer-director Anna Muylaert picked up the CICAE Art Cinema Award and the Panorama Audience Award for The Second Mother (Que Horas Ela Volta?).

In addition, Mexico’s Gabriel Ripstein, the son of the veteran director Arturo Ripstein, received the € 50,000 GWFF First Feature Film Award for 600 Millas.

Honours for Eastern Europe

Two film-makers from Eastern Europe shared the honours for Best Director: Radu Jude for Aferim! and Malgorzata Szumowska for Body.

Jury member Matthew Weiner described Jude’s film as having „a sweeping vision and incredible control of the frame,“  and the Romanian film-maker indicated that he hoped this Silver Bear „would be a message to the institutions who run culture cinema and in my country that it is important to [provide more] support for quality film-making.“

Only two years ago, the Romanian film Child’s Pose had won the Golden Bear in Berlin, but film-makers back home evidently still have an uphill struggle convincing their national authorities of the need to provide a reliable, transparent and appropriate funding structure to be able to compete on an international level.

Szumowska, who was in Competition at Berlin two years ago with In The Name Of…, was praised by Weiner for delivering „a mixture of genre and a deep psychological truth“ in Body, and, in her acceptance speech, she once again expressed her gratitude to the late Karl ‘Baumi’ Baumgartner.

Meanwhile, Russian director Alexey German Jr.’s Under Electric Clouds was one of the two films sharing the Silver Bear for an Outstanding Artistic Contribution, with honours going to the two cinematographers Evgeny Privin and Sergey Michalchuk.

Jury president Aronofsky described Under Electric Clouds  as „a peculiar, original, unique film with images that will stay with everyone who sees it for a very long time.“

German Jr.’s film was the winner of the Screen International Best Pitch Award at Tallinn’s Baltic Event in 2010.

The prize went ex aequo to the Norwegian DoP Sturla Brandth Grøvlen for his lensing of Sebastian Schipper’s Victoria which had been regarded as a possible candidate for the Golden Bear or at least an award for the film’s ensemble.

„This film rocked my world and will rock audiences around the world,“ Aronofsky said.

The film also received prizes from the Guild of German Arthouse Cinemas and the Berliner Morgenpost’s Readers’ Jury.

UK acting triumphs

British actors Sir Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling both triumphed in the acting Silver Bear category for their performances in Andrew Haigh’s 45 Days.

„My friend Albert Finney won one of these in 1985, so it’s only taken me 30 years to catch up with him,“ Courtenay said on stage.

Sir Tom could be excused in the heat of the moment for mixing up dates: in fact, it was at the 1984 Berlinale that Finney received the Silver Bear for his performance in Peter Yates’ The Dresser which had Courtenay playing the devoted personal dresser to Finney’s tyrannical actor-manager.

Rampling, who had been the president of Berlin’s Competition jury in 2006 when Jafar Panahi received the Silver Bear for Offside, recalled that she had first heard about Berlin as a small girl because her father had a gold medal at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

„I was a very competitive young woman at the time and wanted to achieve something myself in Berlin and perhaps at one stage take the baton from him,“ she said, adding „I think this Bear has done the trick..“

Elsewhere, UK documentary film-makers  Saeed Taji Farouky and Michael McEvoy  received the Amnesty International Award and Panorama Audience Award for Tell Spring Not To Come This Year which followed a company of the Afghan National Army during a year of frontline duty in Helmand Province.

Planet Berlinale

While festival director Dieter Kosslick had quipped at the beginning of the 2015 edition that this year’s programme was about „Bond and bondage“, he struck a more serious note on the festival’s penultimate day.

Speaking at the awards ceremony for the independent juries just hours before the closing gala, Kosslick observed that, during the two weeks of what he called ‘Planet Berlinale’, „the world was in a completely different mood from the people at the Berlinale. It is therefore very important for us that we are linked to the real world and the problems of the real world through the films. And I think we did that this year.“

The prize-winners from the official and independent juries can be found at www.berlinale.de