Movies line up for festival awards as Berlinale ends

The Berlin Film Festival is drawing to a close, with Chinese director Wang Xiaoshuai’s epic journey through his nation’s recent past emerging yesterday as a frontrunner for the one of Berlinale’s prestigious prizes.
The number of films competing for the Berlinale’s top prize, the Golden Bear for best picture, was cut to 16 this week after Beijing’s censorship board abruptly withdrew leading Chinese director Zhang Yimou’s film One Second before its premiere today at the festival.
Last year there were 19 films in the main competition.
Speaking at a press conference marking the screening of his family drama So Long, My Son, Wang expressed his shock at the censors’ move to pull One Second, praising Zhang as having been a major influence on Chinese cinema.
“He opened our eyes. We have to be conscious of the need to respect the rules of the system,” said Wang, commenting on his own film getting past the censors.
“We have followed all the procedures,” he said, noting that So Long, My Son had secured the Chinese censors’ so-called Dragon Seal, displayed at the start of the film.
Movies from France, Mongolia, North Macedonia, Germany, Turkey, Israel, and Canada are also leading contenders for prizes in Berlin, when the festival’s six-member jury, headed by French actress Juliette Binoche, hands out the awards at a Hollywood-style gala tomorrow.
Stretching over three hours, Wang’s movie draws on a 30-year sweep of Chinese history, including the ideological upheaval of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, the one-child policy, and the social impact of market reforms and the emergence of a new middle class.
“We need to take lessons from the past and avoid unnecessary mistakes,” Wang said following the screening of his film. “We have a complex relationship with change in China.”
“Our parents and grandparents have experienced both the old society and the new society,” he said.
Another Chinese director, Wang Quan’an, is thought to be in the running for one of the Berlinale’s coveted prizes, which include awards for best director as well as best actor and actress, with his tale of life and love in Mongolia in Ondog.
Launched in 1951 just as the Cold War was taking hold, the Berlinale has for years seen itself as the most political of the major film festivals, including Cannes and Venice.
And this year is no exception.
Indeed, movies about the exploitation of children, the break-up of traditional family structures, gender equality and current political life were the key themes running through this year’s festival programme.
A total of 400 films had been programmed to screen across the festival’s 12 sections, helping the Berlinale to lay claim to the title of the world’s biggest film festival.
Each year it attracts about 500,000 visitors.
Other movies judged by festivalgoers and critics to be contenders for this year Berlinale’s awards include Israeli director Nadav Lapid’s Synonyms, about a young Israeli fleeing to Paris with deeply conflicting feelings about his homeland.
French director Francois Ozon’s hard-hitting tale of sex abuse in the Catholic Church in By the Grace of God and Canadian filmmaker Denis Cote’s Ghost Town Anthology also won critical praise at the 10-day festival.
Cote’s film tells the story of a small snow-covered village badly shaken by a fatal car crash and where the local residents suddenly notice a series of mysterious figures emerging from nowhere.
Another possible candidate is North Macedonian director Teona Strugar Mitevska’s God Exists, her Name is Petrunija, a satire about a woman challenging the patriarchal society around her when she retrieves a cross from a river in a traditional male-only ceremony.
Germany’s Nora Fingscheidt was also one of a record seven female directors included in this year’s showcase competition, winning critical praise for her movie System Crasher.
Fingscheidt’s film focuses on an aggressive nine-year-old girl placed in protective services after she rebelled against authority and proved too much for her mother.
Turkish cinema also made its mark in Berlin with Emin Alper’s well-received A Tale of Three Sisters, a powerful story of three sisters returning home to poverty-stricken Anatolia after being sent away to become housemaids.