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The top prize at this year\u2019s Berlin International Film Festival was given to \u201cDahomey,\u201d a documentary by the French filmmaker Mati Diop about 26 looted artworks that were returned to Benin from France in 2021.<\/p>\n
The unconventional feature, narrated in part by the gravelly, imagined voice of one of the artworks, is a playful exploration of the legacy of colonialism and the interplay between history and identity in present-day Benin. It is Diop\u2019s first feature since \u201cAtlantics,\u201d a drama about Senegalese migrants that won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival in 2019.<\/p>\n
In Diop\u2019s acceptance speech for the prize, known as the Golden Bear, she said that \u201cDahomey\u201d was part of the \u201ccollapsing wall of silence\u201d around the need to return artworks looted by colonial powers to their original owners. \u201cWe can either get rid of the past as an imprisoning burden,\u201d she said, \u201cor we can take responsibility for it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
This year\u2019s jury was led by the Kenyan Mexican actress Lupita Nyong\u2019o and included the German director Christian Petzold, whose film \u201cAfire\u201d won the runner-up prize at last year\u2019s festival in Berlin, and the Spanish director Albert Serra.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
This year\u2019s runner-up prize was presented to \u201cA Traveler\u2019s Needs,\u201d by the prolific Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo, who also won awards at three of the last five editions of the event. His typically understated film stars Isabelle Huppert as an eccentric Frenchwoman who has a series of encounters in Seoul.<\/p>\n
The Special Jury Prize was given to \u201cThe Empire,\u201d a critically divisive, visually lavish satire of \u201cStar Wars\u201d by the director Bruno Dumont set in a French coastal town.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The best director award went to Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias for \u201cPepe,\u201d one of the festival\u2019s strangest entries, about a hippopotamus once owned by the drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. The gender-neutral best performance award went to the actor Sebastian Stan for his work in \u201cA Different Man,\u201d in which he plays a man who undergoes a procedure for his facial disfigurement.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The Silver Bear for best screenplay went to Matthias Glasner, the German writer-director of \u201cDying,\u201d a drama about a family grappling with parental mortality. The best supporting performance award went to Emily Watson for her role as a sinister Irish nun in \u201cSmall Things Like These.\u201d<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s festival, known as the Berlinale in Germany, is the last to be headed by Mari\u00ebtte Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian, who took over dual leadership of the festival in 2019 with the goal of raising its profile. Much of the discussion around the current event<\/a> has centered on whether they have delivered on their mandate.<\/p>\n The competition lineup featured a blend of Berlinale mainstays, including Sang-soo and the German director Andreas Dresen, along with more esoteric and explicitly political films from countries such as Iran. But many critics complained that the lineup was more uneven and less bold than the ones in previous years. At the midpoint of the festival, Susan Vahabzadeh of the S\u00fcddeutsche Zeitung wrote in German that the \u201cdensity of truly successful films had not been high<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Others complained that despite appearances by Adam Sandler and Kristen Stewart, the current event lacked star power<\/a>. In The New York Times, the critic Jessica Kiang wrote that the festival had \u201crarely felt this embattled and unstable, or unsure of itself<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n It sets the stakes for Tricia Tuttle, an American who previously led the London Film Festival and who in April will take the helm of the Berlinale, the largest film festival in the world by audience number. In addition to attracting top-level talent, she will have to steer the festival through a perilous financial and political climate.<\/p>\n At a news conference announcing her appointment in December, Tuttle said that her goal was to balance \u201cestablished filmmakers\u201d with \u201cunderrepresented voices,\u201d but noted that the difficulties facing the Berlinale were not unique. \u201cThe last few years have been challenging for every festival,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n