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Chinese thriller wins best film and best actor prizes at Berlin festival
Chinese thriller wins best film and best actor prizes at Berlin festival
(about 7 hours later)
The 64th Berlin film festival ends on Sunday after a resounding
Hollywood stars may have dominated the red carpets of the German capital over the last week and a half, but it was Chinese cinema that swept the board at the Berlin film festival’s awards ceremony on Saturday night.
triumph for Asian cinema at its gala awards ceremony, including the
Bai Ri Yan Huo (Black Coal, Thin Ice), a wry, noirish thriller set in northern China, won the jury’s Golden Bear award for best film, with the lead Liao Fan also taking home the award for best actor. A further Silver Bear, for best cinematography, went to Tui Na (Blind Massage), a drama with a largely blind cast set in a massage parlour in Nanjing.
Golden Bear top prize for a Chinese noir mystery.
Two auteurs of American independent cinema who had been mooted for the top prize had to be content as runners up. Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, which was filmed over the course of 11 years and had quickly turned into an audience favourite, was awarded the Silver Bear for best director, while Wes Anderson’s festival opener The Grand Budapest Hotel won the grand jury prize.
Black Coal, Thin Ice by Diao Yinan about a
Anderson’s film, starring an illustrious cast including Ralph Fiennes, Tilda Swinton, Bill Murray and Jeff Goldblum, was only one of several large ensemble films at a festival that also saw the European premieres of the extended edit of Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac: Vol 1 and George Clooney’s The Monuments Men.
washed up ex-cop investigating a series of grisly murders took the
The latter, in particular, failed to live up to the hype and even drew a few boos from the audience. Compared to festivals in Cannes or London, the Berlinale has always been more inclined to select films for the international festival circuit than big box office draws. If anything, this year’s festival has further reaffirmed its identity.
highest honour on Saturday as well as the Silver Bear best actor award
Earlier in the week, British director Ken Loach had accepted a lifetime achievement award at the festival, telling the audience: “I think we do live in darkening times, it is sometimes difficult to remember this. ... I think we do need a united Europe, we are in it together, we are Europeans and we have to find common cause.”
for its star Liao Fan.
“It’s really hard to believe that this dream has come true,” Diao said as he accepted the trophy, fighting back tears.
It was the first Chinese film to win in Berlin since the
unconventional love story Tuya’s Marriage by Wang
Quan’an brought home the gold in 2007.
In a remarkably strong showing for Asian contenders, the
Berlinale, Europe’s first major film festival of the year, gave its best
actress prize to Japan’s Haru Kuroki for her role as a discreet
housemaid in wartime Tokyo in Yoji Yamada’s The Little House.
American films shared the glory, with Wes Anderson’s historical
caper The Grand Budapest Hotel, offering a nostalgic look back at a
Europe lost to war, claiming the runner-up Silver Bear grand jury prize.
The picture starring Ralph Fiennes had opened the Berlinale on
February 6. Anderson noted in an acceptance speech read out by US
actress Greta Gerwig, a member of the jury, that it was his first award
at a film festival.
Texas filmmaker Richard Linklater, who shot his innovative
coming-of-age drama Boyhood over more than a decade with the same
actors and was widely tipped to take the Golden Bear, won best director.
“This says best director but I want to think of it as best ensemble,” said Linklater, clutching the trophy.
Best screenplay went to the German siblings Dietrich and Anna
Brueggemann for their wrenching drama Stations of the Cross (Kreuzweg)
about a teenager who makes the ultimate sacrifice for her
fundamentalist Catholic family.
Veteran French director Alain Resnais drew the Alfred Bauer Prize
for work of particular innovation for his play-within-a-film Life of
Riley.
And the second of three Chinese films in competition in Berlin, Blind Massage featuring a cast made up in part of amateur
blind actors, captured a Silver Bear prize for outstanding artistic
contribution for cinematographer Zeng Jian.
A nine-member jury led by US producer James Schamus (Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon) handed out the prizes at a theatre in the German
capital.
Black Coal, Thin Ice is set in the late 1990s in the frosty
reaches of northern China and its murder mystery plot is told through
enigmatic flashbacks. It is Diao’s third feature film.
Liao said he put on 20kg to play the
alcoholic suspended police officer who falls hard for a beautiful murder
suspect (Gwei Lun Mei).
Diao said he saw his film as bridging the gap between pure arthouse cinema and multiplex fare.
“I finally did find the right way to combine a film which has a
commercial aspect to it but which is nonetheless art, so that it’s
possible to launch it in these terms,” he told reporters after the
awards ceremony.
He said Chinese films were gaining ground in Western cinemas thanks in part to their exposure at major film festivals.
“Every time that we take our films abroad it seems that there is an ever greater enthusiasm for Chinese cinema,” he said.
Black Coal, Thin Ice divided audiences in Berlin but won over many critics.
Movie news website Indiewire noted buzz about the picture had
been strong ahead of its screening “on the possibility of the film
becoming that whitest of whales: a crossover Chinese-language
international hit”.
Industry magazine The Hollywood Reporter hailed it as “a salute
to the classic Hollywood film noir, an exciting stylistic tour-de-force”
but questioned its foreign box-office prospects.
The 11-day festival wraps up Sunday with screenings of its most popular features from a lineup of more than 400 movies.
On Thursday British director Ken Loach picked up an honorary Golden Bear for his life’s work.
52 Tuesdays by Australian director Sophie Hyde was honoured on Friday with the Generations 14+ prize, an award given by juries made up of the same age group as the target audience.
The film, which is about a teenage girl whose mother has a sex change operation, also won at the American Sundance festival last month .
