In the end, political cinema won out. At the closing ceremony of a Berlin Film Festival blighted by controversy and discourse over the political responsibilities or otherwise of art, German-Turkish filmmaker İlker Çatak lifted the Golden Bear for his bold, statement-making film “Yellow Letters,” a portrait of a married playwright and actress in contemporary Turkey who find themselves targeted by the state for their particular brand of protest theater.
It’s a stirring film with a compelling formal twist: Though it’s set entirely in Turkey, it was shot entirely — and without disguise — in Çatak’s home country of Germany, with major cities credited as “playing” their Turkish counterparts in prominent title cards. Before presenting it with the prize, jury president Wim Wenders commended the film for “[speaking] up very clearly about the political language of totalitarianism as opposed to the empathetic language cinema,” and declared it “a terrifying vision into the future.”
Wenders’ words were pointed, given the backlash he weathered at the start of a festival for a press conference statement about the role of politics in cinema, in response to a question about the festival’s perceived complicity with the German government’s support of Israel in the ongoing war on Palestine. “We have to stay out of politics because if we make movies that are dedicatedly political, we enter the field of politics. But we are the counterweight of politics, we are the opposite of politics. We have to do the work of people, not the work of politicians.”
Tonight, Wenders addressed the controversy with a carefully prepared and more nuanced statement on the subject, before the Competition prizes were handed out. Directing his words toward those who have criticized him for not taking a stronger activist stance, he said: “The language of cinema is empathetic, the language of social cinema is effective. The dignity and protection of human life — these are our causes as well. You do necessary and courageous work, but does it need to be in competition with ours? Do our voices need to clash?”
The prize confirms the 42-year-old Çatak’s entry into the world-cinema major leagues, after his previous feature “The Teachers’ Lounge” broke out of the Panorama sidebar at the 2023 Berlinale and landed an Oscar nomination for Best International Feature. He’s the first homegrown filmmaker in 22 years to take the top prize at Berlin, since fellow German-Turkish director Fatih Akin won in 2004 for “Head-On.”
“[It is] as though the film itself were in political exile,” wrote Variety critic Siddhant Adlakha in his review of “Yellow Letters,” praising it as “a drama of surprising universality, in which a well-to-do couple becomes the target of unjust dismissals and persecution for political wrongthink against the Turkish regime.”
Certainly, whether coincidentally or in response to the festival scandal, the jury collectively gravitated toward works that might well be described as “dedicatedly political.” The second most prestigious award, the Grand Jury Prize, went to another incendiary Turkish-set film, Emin Alper’s “Salvation,” described by Variety’s Catherine Bray in her review as “a film notionally about the longtail fallout from a land dispute, but more elementally about how violence happens.”
Though it’s inspired by real events from 2009 in the country’s Kurdish region, “Salvation” also presents a brutal rural massacre as an allegory for wider conflicts, as Alper himself explicitly clarified in his director’s statement on the film: “I believe this story has global relevance. We are living through a moment where ethnic hostility, ‘survivalist’ claims over land and the feeling of a constant threat from an ‘enemy’ culminated in the genocide in Palestine.”
Alper doubled down on that statement with a fiery speech dedicated to “Palestinians in Gaza living and dying in the most terrible conditions” and “People in Iran suffering under the most terrible tyranny,” among other groups “losing your rights day by day, when you are bombarded by those who do not consider you a human being.” “You are not alone,” he concluded, to massive cheers from the audience.
Other jury awards in the festival’s main Competition went to less outwardly provocative, but no less trenchant, works. The third place Jury Prize went to U.S. director Lance Hammer — who competed at Berlin with his 2008 debut “Ballast” — for his long-awaited second feature “Queen at Sea.” A devastating family portrait centered on an elderly London couple grappling with the ravages of dementia, it also won the gender-neutral Best Supporting Performance award for veterans Tom Courtenay (a Berlinale Best Actor winner in 2015 for “45 Years”) and Anna Calder-Marshall.
Hammer begins his speech with a dedication to Wenders himself, citing the veteran’s 1987 classic “Wings of Desire” as a film that changed his life, while Courtenay celebrated the international nature of the film, a European co-production set in the Britain, from an American filmmaker. “How wonderful, when America seems to be turning its back on Europe, to be in this film,” he said from the stage.
German star Sandra Hüller, an Oscar nominee two years ago for “Anatomy of a Fall,” won the gender-neutral Best Leading Performance award for her extraordinary turn as a 17th-century woman living as a man in Austrian director Markus Schleinzer’s historical tragedy “Rose.” In a rave review, Variety called her performance in “Rose” the auteurist film’s “human factor”: “at once armored, guarded and intensely vulnerable.”
It’s Hüller’s second win at the Berlinale, as exactly 20 years ago, she took Best Actress for her feature film debut in “Requiem.” “It was my first film festival ever, I didn’t know what it was, and I thought I would die,” she recalled in her speech, to laughter from the audience — who tonight applauded her as a veritable national treasure.
Grant Gee, a renowned British director of music videos and documentaries, won the Best Director prize for his debut narrative feature “Everybody Digs Bill Evans,” an elegant, fine-grained biopic of the late American jazz pianist, played by Norwegian star Anders Danielsen Lie. Variety‘s review praised the film as “nimble, restrained but quietly plangent … [pulled] off with considerable beauty and feeling.”
It was “lovely, also slightly lonesome-making” to be honored as a solo director, Gee said in speech, citing how easy his collaborators made his job for him. Praising his “wonderful” cast, which also includes Bill Pullman and Laurie Metcalf, he admitted: “Honestly, I directed them so little.”
Best Screenplay went to Québécois director Geneviève Dulude-De Celles for her sophomore feature “Nina Roza,” a deftly layered and complex exploration of immigrant identity and alienation, celebrated by Variety as “a film of many subtle, tricky marvels.” A special jury prize went to the lone documentary in Competition, American duo Anna Fitch and Banker White’s intimate, unusual “Yo (Love is a Rebellious Bird),” described by Adlakha as “a sentimental arts-and-crafts project given cinematic form, in ways that occasionally blur the line between reality and artistic representation.”
Politics resurfaced in the festival’s secondary Perspectives competition, dedicated to debut features, where Palestinian-Syrian filmmaker Abdallah Alkhatib took the top prize for “Chronicles From the Siege,” a series of powerful vignettes dramatizing the travails of everyday life in a war zone in an unspecified country that is nonetheless clearly identifiable as Palestine. (The film was shot, however, in Algeria.) An honorable mention went to “Forest High,” French director Manon Coubia’s quietly beguiling triptych portrait of the women managing a remote Alpine hikers’ lodge.
Taking to the stage with a Palestinian flag, Alkhatib was forthright in his speech: “Palestine will be free and one day we’ll have a great festival in the middle of Gaza, where we’ll speak about politics before cinema.” Himself a refugee in Germany, the filmmaker then directly addressed the German government: “People have told me to be careful … but I don’t care. You are partners in the genocide of Gaza by Israel, but you choose not to care. Free Palestine from now until the end of the world.”
Festival director Tricia Tuttle was clearly prepared for a night of strong statements, as she discussed in her opening remarks at the top of the ceremony: “We were publicly challenged this year, and that doesn’t always feel good, but it is good. Criticism and speaking up is part of democracy, and so is disagreement.” Continuing, she said: “If this Berlinale has been emotionally charged, that’s not a failure of the Berlinale, and it’s not a failure of cinema. That’s the Berlinale doing its job, and that’s cinema doing its job.”
Full list of winners below.
MAIN COMPETITION
Golden Bear for Best Film: “Yellow Letters,” İlker Çatak
Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize: “Salvation,” Emin Alper
Silver Bear Jury Prize: “Queen at Sea,” Lance Hammer
Silver Bear for Best Director: “Everybody Digs Bill Evans,” Grant Gee
Silver Bear for Best Lead Performance: “Rose,” Sandra Hüller
Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance: “Queen at Sea,” Anna Calder-Marshall and Tom Courtenay
Silver Bear for Best Screenplay: “Nina Roza,” Geneviève Dulude-De Celles
Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution: “Yo (Love is a Rebellious Bird),” Anna Fitch and Banker White
PERSPECTIVES COMPETITION
GWFF Best First Feature Award: “Chronicles From the Siege,” Abdallah Alkhatib
Special Mention (Coup de Coeur): “Forest High,” Manon Coubia
BERLINALE DOCUMENTARY AWARD
Best Documentary: “If Pigeons Turned to Gold,” Pepa Lubojacki
Special Mentions: “Tutu,” Sam Pollard; “Sometimes I Imagine Them All at a Party,” Daniela Magnani Hüller
SHORT FILM COMPETITION
Golden Bear for Best Short Film: “Someday a Child,” Marie-Rose Osta
Silver Bear for Best Short Film: “A Woman’s Place is Everywhere,” Fanny Texier
Berlinale Shorts Filmmaker Award: “Kleptomania,” Jingkai Qu
Meanwhile, films such as Faraz Sharia’s courtroom drama “Prosecution” and Fernando Eimbcke’s family study “Flies” are among the multiple prizewinners from the festival’s various independently juried awards, listed in full below.
PREVIOUSLY ANNOUNCED:
PANORAMA AUDIENCE AWARDS
Audience Award (Fiction): “Prosecution,” Faraz Sharia
First Runner-up: “Four Minus Three,” Adrian Goiginger
Second Runner-up: “Mouse,” Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson
Audience Award (Documentary): “Traces,” Alisa Kovalenko and Marysia Nikitiuk
First Runner-up: “The Other Side of the Sun,” Tawfik Sabouni
Second Runner-up: “Bucks Harbor,” Pete Muller
GENERATION COMPETITION
International Jury
Grand Prix for the Best Film in Generation Kplus: “Gugu’s World,” Allan Deberton
Special Mention: “Atlas of the Universe,” Paul Negoescu
Special Prize for the Best Short Film in Generation Kplus: “Spi,” Navroz Shaban
Special Mention: “Under the Wave off Little Dragon,” Luo Jian
Grand Prix for the Best Film in Generation 14plus: “Sad Girlz,” Fernanda Tovar
Special Mention: “Matapanki,” Diego Mapache Fuentes
Special Prize for the Best Short Film in Generation 14plus: “The Thread,” Fenn O’Meally
Special Mention: “Memories of a Window,” Mehraneh Salimian and Amin Pakparvar
Youth Jury
Crystal Bear for the Best Film in Generation Kplus: “Gugu’s World,” Allan Deberton
Special Mention: “Not a Hero,” Rima Das
Crystal Bear for the Best Short Film in Generation Kplus: “Whale 52 – Suite for Man, Boy, and Whale,” Daniel Neiden
Special Mention: “Under the Wave off Little Dragon,” Luo Jian
Crystal Bear for the Best Film in Generation 14plus: “Sad Girlz,” Fernanda Tovar
Special Mention: “A Family,” Mees Peijnenburg
Crystal Bear for the Best Short Film in Generation 14plus: ”Memories of a Window,” Mehraneh Salimian and Amin Pakparvar
Special Mention: ”Nobody Knows the World,” Roddy Dextre
TEDDY AWARDS
Best Feature Film: “Ivan & Hadoum,” Ian de la Rosa
Best Documentary: “Barbara Forever,” Brydie O’Connor
Best Short Film: “Taxi Moto,” Gaël Kamilindi
Jury Award: “Trial of Hein,” Kai Stänicke
Special Award: Céline Sciamma
FIPRESCI AWARDS
Competition: “Soumsoum, the Night of the Stars,” Mahamat-Saleh Haroun
Perspectives: “Animol,” Ashley Walters
Panorama: “Narciso,” Marcelo Martinessi
Forum: “AnyMart,” Yusuke Iwasaki
ECUMENICAL JURY AWARDS
Competition: “Flies,” Fernando Eimbcke
Panorama: “Bucks Harbor,” Pete Muller
Forum: “River Dreams,“ Kristina Mikhailova
LABEL EUROPA CINEMAS AWARD
“Four Minus Three,” Adrian Goiginger
PRIZE OF THE GUILD OF GERMAN ARTHOUSE CINEMAS
“Yellow Letters,” İlker Çatak
Special Mention: “The Loneliest Man in Town,” Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel
READERS’ JURIES
Berliner Morgenpost Readers’ Award: “Flies,” Fernando Eimbcke
Tagesspiegel Readers’ Award: “I Built a Rocket Imagining Your Arrival,” Janaína Marques
CALIGARI FILM PRIZE
“If Pigeons Turned to Gold,” Pepa Lubojacki
PEACE FILM PRIZE
“Tutu,” Sam Pollard
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL FILM AWARDd
“What Will I Become?,” Lexie Bean and Logan Rozos
HEINER CAROW PRIZE
“Prosecution,” Faraz Shariat
PRIZE AG KINO – GILDE – CINEMA VISION 14PLUS
“What Will I Become?,” Lexie Bean and Logan Rozos
Special Mention: ”Sunny Dancer,” George Jaques
C.I.C.A.E. Art Cinema Award
“Prosecution,” Faraz Shariat
“On Our Own,” Tudor Cristian Jurgiu
