Berlin prizes announced: Grbavica debut feature wins 2

And the Winners were...

Golden Bear, the big one for best feature film in competition, "GRBAVICA" directed by Jasmila Zbanic of Bosnia. Zbanic has received fairly wide recognition for her documentary films, among them '"Do you remember Sarajevo?". This her feature film debut and the picture focuses on the traumas of the Yugoslavian wars and their current aftermath. This is basically a study of the relationship between a young mother and her twelve year old daughter. The child wants to believe that her father was a war hero, but mother Esma, wants to protectr her daughter and herself by concealing the truth about the war in Sarajevo and the circumstances surrounding Sara's birth. Sounds good to me, but I didn't get to see it, so no evaluative comments. "Grbavica" also picked up a second award, the Eucheminical Jury
Prize, which is basically a distinction for films with redeeming Religious content, or something like that - let"s just say it was a nice Christian film.

The Main Jury Prize (Silver Bear) was shared by two films, "En Soap" from Denmark, directed by Pernille Fischer Christensen, and "Offside". En soap follows the adventures of a young woman after her break up with her boyfriend so she moves away. Her new neighbours are Veronica, a transsexual who has applied for '"gender reassignment'". Charlotte, the heroine of the tale gets more and more involved with Veronica, but the latters suffers from a nervous disorder making it impossible for "her" to work. Instead she watches soap operas on television religiously. One night Charlotte and Veronica get involved in erotic intimation, but realizing this is a dead end street, they withdraw from further involvement. "En Soap" also picked up a 25,000 Euros cash award as the best debut feature film. Not bad for a beginner.

"Offside" is an Iranian film with a soccer (fussball) setting, but is primarily a film about the position of women in present day Iranian society. The film describes an incident surrounding a world cup qualification match being held in Teheran. A girl disguised as a boy tries to get into the stadium where the match is about to start but women are not allowed to enter this man's world. The girl is discovered and arrested. Jafar Panahi is fast rising director on the Iranian film scene. Her drama "The Circle" took the Golden Lion at Venice in 2000. So far, three awarded films, three woman directors -- the times they certainly are a-changing, especially in Berlin.

The Silver bear for best direction went to Englishman Michael Winterbottom and co-director Mat Whitecross for "The Road to Guantanamo". This is a docu-drama about three British Moslems who were taken prisoner in Aphganistan and interred in the notorious military detention center located in Guantanomo, the small American toehold on Cuba proper, where the Americans have long maintained a naval base. The trio called the "Tipton Three" after their hometown in England, were held without charges and finally released; this pseudo-documentary is a combination of pure fiction, so-called "authentic reports" and interviews. Winterbottom is clearly trying to encroach on Michael's Moore territory, but many journalists here thought the film was a pretty weak peace of propagandizing -- which, come to
think of it, is what Michael Moore's films are --Pure propaganda aimed sat a captive audience who already agrees with the directors views. Anyway, attacking Guantanamo is a topic you can't lose with in the politically conscious Berlinale -- because that damn Bush should’nt been attacking nice peaceful people like the Taliban in the first place ...right?

The Best Actor award when to ever popular German actor, Moritz Bleibtreu (love that name: it means "stay faithful"), whom American Audiences mat remember from Istvan Szabo's "Taking Sides" in which Bleibtreu was Harvey Keitel's German assistant in the post-war investigation of the suspected Nazi affiliations of German orchestra conductor, Wilhelm Furtwangler. The award was for his work in Oskar Roehler's much discussed film "Elementary Particles" which was definitely in the running for the Golden Baer.
The Best Actress prize was picked up by a German as well, Sandra Huller for her work in Hans Christian Schmid's "Requiem". The film is a story about a young girl from a strict Catholic home in southern Germany who starts hearing voices and begins to believe she is possessed, with eventually tragic results. Whattsa matter with these people -- don"t they realize this has been done a few times before by Linda Blair, and others. Anyway, this film was well liked by the German press brigade so maybe it has something Germanically different going for it.

Finally, in the thespic department, German actor Jurgen Vogel, the serial rapist in "Free Will" (Freie Wille) received a Silver Bear for "eine Kunstlerische Leistung", which means something like "an especially artistic performance", so, if his performance was so "artistic", why didn't they gave him the best actor prize? Or is it the case that Mr. Bleibtreu's performance was better, but not as autistic -- oops, Ar-tistic? -- Well, since Berlin doesn't recognize supporting roles, maybe this is a nice extra category to have around. Makes me wonder though, who was more artistic in their dramatic creations -- Heath or Philip Seymour. In any case there was a remarkably rich collection of films of all kinds to choose from in this 56th Berlinale and a plethora of other minor prizes, mentions and distinctions, but to go into all of them would only cloud the reader's mind.

After all, the Shadow knows ...

by Chaim Pevner, Berlin, Saturday night.