2024-02-24 21:23:44
The documentary “Dahomey” by French-born director Mati Diop won the Golden Bear at the 74th Berlinale. The filmmaker with Senegalese roots deals with the return of art treasures stolen from Africa. The Viennese Martin Gschlacht received a Silver Bear in the “Outstanding Artistic Achievement” category on Saturday for his camera work for the Austrian film “Des Teufels Bad”.
In “Dahomey” Diop accompanies 26 statues on their journey from France to their country of origin, today’s Benin. The experimental documentary captivates with poetic passages – for example, one of the art looted treasures speaks off-screen several times. German director Matthias Glasner received a Silver Bear for the script of his drama “Die”.
This year the Grand Jury Prize went to South Korea. The jury honored the bizarre chamber play “Yeohaengjaui pilyo” (“A Traveler’s Needs”) by South Korean veteran director Hong Sangsoo with Isabelle Huppert in the lead role.
The Romanian-American actor Sebastian Stan accepted the Silver Bear for best acting performance in a leading role. He plays a man with a deformed face in the tragicomedy “A Different Man”. After an experiment, he turns into an outwardly attractive man. Contrary to what he expected, this doesn’t bring him any luck.
Stan, who was born in Romania in 1982, grew up partly in Vienna and has lived in the USA since the age of twelve, first became known through television. The youth series “Gossip Girl” brought him a larger audience from 2007 onwards. In recent years he has made a name for himself in the cinema, particularly as an actor in fantasy films. Since he impressed in a key role in “Captain America: The First Avenger” in 2011, he has been entrusted with similar tasks in several action blockbusters. The role of Edward in “A Different Man” is undoubtedly the most complex role of his career to date.
The award for best supporting role went to Brit Emily Watson in the Irish-Belgian drama “Small Things Like These”. The jury’s prize was won by the science fiction parody “L”Empire”. The Dominican Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias was awarded the Silver Bear for best director for the experimental film “Pepe” about a dead hippopotamus in Colombia.
Martin Gschlacht received the award for his camera work for “Des Teufels Bad” by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala. With Soap&Skin star Anja Plaschg in the lead role, this film paints a picture of rural Upper Austria around 1750 based on the fate of a woman who is trapped in this archaic life. The Viennese, who was born in 1969, emphasized that he had to share the prize with his “most important allies” at the Berlinale Gala and named Plaschg and the directing duo Franz and Fiala. “Martin’s pictures are never an end in themselves, he never makes them just because they are beautiful or spectacular, he always wants them to serve to tell the story of the film,” emphasized the two filmmakers. “Des Teufels Bad” opens in Austrian cinemas on March 8th.
There were two further red-white-red successes in secondary competitions. “Favoriten” by Ruth Beckermann was awarded the Peace Prize by an independent jury. Every year, this awards films that impress with their powerful message of peace and aesthetic implementation of the theme. For her documentary, Beckermann accompanied an elementary school class in the Vienna district of the title for a year. On Friday, the Austrian director Philipp Fussenegger received a Teddy Award for his documentary “Teaches of Peaches” about the Canadian musician Merrill Nisker aka Peaches. “Des Teufels Bad” was also nominated for one of the queer film awards. Josef Hader’s new film “Andrea Gets Divorced”, which was extremely well received by critics and audiences in Berlin, had to admit defeat for the audience award.
State Secretary for Culture Andrea Mayer (Greens) congratulated the three Austrian prize winners at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival. “The particularly strong Austrian presence in Berlin this year is a great pleasure. Austria’s film industry is characterized by innovation, dynamism and extraordinary diversity,” she said in a broadcast on Saturday evening. “The fact that local works achieve an outstanding international presence and are successful on festival screens worldwide is clear evidence of their originality and high creative standards.”
This year’s Berlinale was particularly characterized by political debates – including at the awards ceremony. The Palestinian filmmaker Basel Adra called on Germany on stage to stop supplying weapons to Israel. Adra made the documentary “No Other Land” with three other filmmakers and won the documentary film award for it. The Israeli-Palestinian collective had already called for a ceasefire in Gaza during the film premiere at the Berlinale. “No Other Land” is about the displacement of Palestinians in the villages of Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron in the West Bank. Several people on stage carried a note with the inscription “Ceasefire Now”, for example the Frenchwoman Véréna Paravel from the documentary film award jury.
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