Turkish film wins Berlinale’s top honours

BERLIN - Turkish director Semih Kaplanoglu’s film Bal (Honey) won the Berlin Film Festival’s prestigious Golden Bear prize Saturday.

The movie, about about a young boy who goes in search of his father after his father fails to return home was one of 20 films competing for the 60th anniversary Berlinale’s top honours.

Relating how a bear smelling honey approached the production team as they were shooting the film, Kaplanoglu said “the bear is now back”.

The festival’s main programme included 18 world premieres, with three debut features.

Romanian director Florin Serban won two prizes for “Eu cand vreau sa fluier, fluiere” (If I Want To Whistle, I Whistle), about a young man in a youth detention centre who is facing up to the new realities that have emerged in the wake of the fall of Communism across Eastern Europe.

In addition to the Alfred Bauer prize for opening up new perspectives in cinema, Serban won the Berlinale’s Grand Prix prize.

The Berlinale’s best director award went to controversial Polish-French director Roman Polanski for best director for his thriller “The Ghost Writer” Saturday.

However, Polanski was not on hand to accept the prize as the 76-year-old the Oscar-winning director is at present under house arrest in his Swiss chalet facing US extradition moves for a 1977 underage sex case.

The festival’s international jury, headed up by veteran German director Werner Herzog, awarded the Silver Bear for best actress to Shinobu Terajima for Japanese director’s Koji Wakamatsu’s anti-war film “Caterpillar”.

Grigori Dobrygin and Sergei Puskepalis shared the Silver Bear for best actor, who played two men attempting to carve out a relationship of trust against the sweeping landscape of a deserted Arctic island in Russian director Alexei Popgrebsky’s “How I Ended This Summer”.

Cameraman Pavel Kostomanov won the Silver Bear for best artistic achievement for “How I Ended This Summer”.

Wang Quan’an and Na Jin won a Silver Bear for scriptwriting for Tuan Yuan (”Apart Together”). Wang also directed the film, which opened the festival and is a love story set against the tensions between Taiwan and mainland China.

Accepting the prize, Wang dedicated the award to Berlin, whose history has been marked by division.

Iranian-born and Swedish-based director Babak Najafi won the Berlinale prize for best first feature for “Sebbe” about the life of 15-year-old boy living in a small apartment with his single mother.

The festival’s Golden Camera award went to Japanese master director Yoji Yamada whose film “Otouto” (About Her Brother) was the Berlinale’s closing film.