The post-Soviet trace is traced in the award list
The 73rd Berlin Film Festival has ended – the first full-fledged, open, post-COVID, devoid of any restrictions. The person who caused the most attention was the president of the jury of the main competition – 32-year-old American actress Kristen Stewart. Her final appearance on the red carpet made a splash – in a transparent black dress that opened her body, despite the chilly Berlin weather, wind and even snow. But this is also a special Berlin chic – to appear so fearlessly in sandals and cleavage, as beautiful actresses do every year at the Berlinale, who are met by the public in a coat to be photographed and get an autograph.
Five women and two men – this is how the gender issue was resolved in the jury, and many ladies are represented among the laureates in various nominations. Talk about the dominance of actresses in the jury of international film screenings is also innumerable. They, as a rule, are denied intelligence and certainly do not expect anything good. However, refereeing Kristen Stewart did not cause irritation. The winners were mainly directors of the older generation – 60 plus and … one little girl. Only actresses have received awards. The male role in the layout of the jury and in the regulations of the festival is absent as a class, however, as well as the female one. It’s just that acting without gender division has recently been fixed at the Berlinale. The winner this time was nine-year-old Sofia Otero, who played eight-year-old Coco in the Spanish film “20,000 Species of Bees” directed by Estibalis Urresola Solaguren, who came to visit her grandmother who is engaged in beekeeping for the summer. In the entire history of the Berlinale, this is the youngest laureate. The jury awarded 28-year-old Austrian trans actress Thea Ehre for her supporting role in the film Until the End of the Night by the German director and former film critic Christoph Hochheusler.
The main award of the festival – the “Golden Bear” – was received by the documentary film “On Adamant” by 72-year-old French director Nicolas Philibert about a Parisian clinic on the barge “Adamant”, moored off the banks of the Seine. People with mental disorders are being treated there and a new approach to difficult patients is being practiced. And the second most important competition “Meetings” ended with the victory of the non-fiction “Echo” by Tatiana Huezo about the inhabitants of a Mexican village. The Grand Jury Prize (Grand Prix) was awarded to Kristen Stewart and her team for Red Sky, the second part of the trilogy by German director Christian Petzold, a favorite of the Berlinale, a bright representative of the so-called Berlin school, but little demanded by other major festivals, which does not detract from its merits. Petzold on a metaphysical level feels the time, the rhythm of Berlin and a single person. Receiving the award, he said words of gratitude to the recently departed Spanish classic Carlos Saura, who had a great influence on him.
The Silver Bear for directing was awarded to the French master Philippe Garrel for The Great Chariot, where his son Louis Garrel and daughter Estelle Garrel played representatives of the dynasty of puppeteers. The Italian “Disco Boy” by Giaccomo Abruzzese, starring another Berlinale favorite, German actor Franz Rogowski as Belarusian Alexei, who joined the French Foreign Legion, was recognized for outstanding artistic contribution. Thus, the work of the female cameraman, and in modern terms, the cameraman Helen Luvar, was appreciated. “Silver Bear” for the script went to “Music” (Germany-France-Serbia) 61-year-old again director from Germany Angela Chanelek. She is also a screenwriter, and she began her career as an actress, worked in the theater, feels fine states well, loves Chekhov, and this is obvious in her works. A scenario based on the myth of Oedipus, about the will of chance, which can turn a person’s life upside down. One of the producers of “Music” was our compatriot Kirill Krasovsky, known, in particular, for the film “Russians on Marienplatz”, produced in Kazakhstan based on the prose of Vladimir Kunin.
Newspaper headline:
Little girl and masters