Nicolas Philibert, Best Picture Award winning director of the Golden Bear for the film ” on Adamantgestures during a news conference at the 73rd Berlinale International Film Festival on February 25, 2023 in Berlin, Germany. Photo Credit: Reuters
The Berlin Film Festival on Saturday awarded the top Golden Bear prize to a documentary by French director Nicolas Philibert and the best acting prize to an eight-year-old girl in what jury chief Kristen Stewart described as a “boundary-pushing” event.
, on Adamant“Coming More Than 20 Years After Philibert’s Acclaimed Education Documentary” to be and to be“, is about a floating day-care center for people with psychiatric problems on the Seine in Paris.
Thanking the jury, 72-year-old Philibert said, “That documentary can be considered cinema in itself touches me deeply”.
In a night full of surprises, the festival’s gender-neutral acting award was presented to eight-year-old Sofia Otero of Spain.
The young actress won an award for playing a transgender child in ” 20,000 species of bees“, the feature debut of Spanish director Estíbaliz Urresola Solaguern.
Critics have praised the film fiercely. Screen Daily, for one, predicted that “art audiences around the world must respond to the compassion, breadth and humanity of a film that takes a while to produce, but when it does, never holds its own”. does not lose”.
Otero, who held back tears as she accepted the award, later told reporters that she was “very grateful, very happy”.
Stewart, the youngest president in the festival’s history at 32, said the jury has been asking itself “what makes a film” all week.
They had set aside “invisible parameters” in awarding the Golden Bear, she said, because “when you focus too much on something you lose track of what it does.
“It’s a boundary-pushing festival and so it provides us with an opportunity to expand how we define those things, how we value works of art, how we classify them,” she Said.
There was more success for France as 74-year-old Philippe Garrel won the Silver Bear for Best Director for “”. Plough“, a drama about three siblings from a family of puppeteers who are coping with the death of their father.
Garrel dedicated the award to his children and to French-Swiss director Jean-Luc Godard, “a great mentor to many of us”, who died last September.
Second prize gone” a fireFrom German director Christian Petzold, about a group of friends whose vacation retreat on the Baltic coast goes terribly wrong.
Variety called it “wonderfully well-watched and acidly funny”, while The Hollywood Reporter said it was a “deceptively simple and straightforward but emotionally layered film”.
was coming in third” bad manners“By João Canizo, Portugal, about several female members of a family who run a dilapidated hotel and are also struggling with their relationships with each other.
, on AdamantProvides an intimate glimpse into the lives of adults and their caregivers at day-care centers in Paris, with an emphasis on providing them with a creative outlet.
Filbert said the film was “an attempt to overturn our image” of people with mental illness.
“Old proverbs are deeply rooted. The film tries to uncover them [but] There’s still a long way to go.”
The Hollywood Reporter praised the film’s “warmth and enthusiasm”, calling it “a portrait of several individuals who, despite their noticeable disabilities, are capable of producing original and moving works of art”.
French President Emmanuel Macron congratulated both Philibert and his subjects on the victory, calling the film “a story of humanity and commitment”.
Documentaries are regularly selected in major international film competitions, but rarely win prizes.
Last year, the Venice Film Festival awarded its Golden Lion to a documentary by Laura Poitras about the opiate crisis in the United States (” all the beauty and the bloodshed,
After two years of a reduced format due to pandemic restrictions, the 11-day Berlinale is back in full swing this year, with A-listers like Cate Blanchett, Helen Mirren and Steven Spielberg walking the red carpet.
The festival, which ranks alongside Cannes and Venice as one of Europe’s top cinema showcases, also marked the first anniversary Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and highlights anti-government protests in Iran with new feature films and documentaries.
There were 19 films from around the world vying for this year’s Golden Bear, which were awarded at a gala ceremony by a jury led by Stewart.