The 76th Berlin International Film Festival ended with the presentation of the Golden and Silver Bears. The jury, chaired by Wim Wenders, awarded the top prize to “Yellow Letters” by German director Ilker Catak. It was the first time in more than 20 years that a German film had won Berlinale’s main award: the previous such case was in 2004, when Fatih Akin’s “Head-On” took the prize.
Catak’s film follows a married couple working in theater who are forced to leave Ankara for Istanbul after a conflict with the authorities. Wenders said the jury honored the film for finding a “political language of totalitarianism.” At the same time, several prominent premieres went home empty-handed, including the black-and-white Mexican drama “Moscas” and “Josephine”, which screened in the festival’s final days.
Other widely discussed titles included “Rose” by Markus Schleinzer, with Sandra Huller winning the acting prize for the lead role, and “Queen at Sea” by Lance Hammer, which received the Jury Grand Special Prize as well as acting awards for Anna Calder-Marshall and Tom Courtenay. The Teddy Award for best queer-themed film went to Kai Stenicke’s debut “The Man Without a Homeland”.
One of the festival’s biggest off-screen developments was the controversy over Wenders’s remarks. At a press conference, he declined to comment on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying:
“We must remain outside politics.”After that, writer Arundhati Roy withdrew the restored version of In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones from the festival, calling the jury chair’s position “disgusting” and “shameless.” The festival leadership, headed by Tricia Tuttle, later defended him.
The shorts program included Russia-linked films “Chuuraa” by Yakut directors Evgenia and Maxim Arbugaev and the mixed-media animated work “Unidentified Non-Flying Objects” by Sasha and Nadya Svirsky. In the Panorama section, the French film “A Russian Winter” depicted young emigrants from Russia after the start of the war in Ukraine in 2022. In the Forum section, Kazakh documentary filmmaker Kristina Mikhailova received a warm response for “Dreams of the River”, a film about contemporary Kazakhstan, gender imbalance, and the experience of surviving violence.