10:46 a.m. | Updated
BERLIN — “Child’s Pose,” a film by the Romanian director Calin Peter Netzer, took the top prize, the Golden Bear, at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival on Saturday.
The story of a privileged woman whose maternal instincts kick into overdrive when her son kills a teenage boy in a car accident, “Child’s Pose” shares several hallmarks of the recently revitalized Romanian cinema, not least a focus on institutional malaise and corruption. It was written by Mr. Netzer and Razvan Radulescu, who also collaborated on the screenplays of many other acclaimed Romanian films, including “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” and “4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days.”
The runner-up prize, the Silver Bear, went to another Eastern European social drama, “An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker.” Directed by the Bosnian filmmaker Danis Tanovic (best known for the Oscar-winning “No Man’s Land”) and based on actual events, the film recounts an impoverished Roma family’s struggles with an unjust health care system, and enlists the real-life couple to re-enact their plight. The male lead, Nazif Mujic, won the best actor prize.
Paulina García, the star of Sebastián Lelio’s “Gloria,” about the romantic reawakening of a Chilean divorcee, won the tightly contested best actress category. David Gordon Green won best director for “Prince Avalanche,” a buddy comedy starring Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch. And best screenplay went to Jafar Panahi and Kamboziya Partovci for one of the most talked-about films in the competition, “Closed Curtain,” a confessional, self-reflexive drama about an artist and his demons. It is the second movie, after “This Is Not a Film” (2010), that Mr. Panahi has made in defiance of a ban on filmmaking by the Iranian authorities.
The Alfred Bauer Prize for innovation, named for the founder of the Berlinale, went to perhaps the most eccentric film in the competition, the French Canadian director Denis Côté’s “Vic and Flo Saw a Bear,” a darkly comic and melodramatic lesbian love story. The Australian director Kim Mordaunt won the best first feature award for “The Rocket.” And the Teddy Award for best gay-themed film went to the Polish director Malgoska Szumowska’s “In the Name of …,” about a Catholic priest struggling with his homosexuality.
Led by the Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai, whose new film, “The Grandmaster,” opened the festival, this year’s Berlinale jury included the actor Tim Robbins; the filmmakers Susanne Bier, Andreas Dresen and Athina Rachel Tsangari; the cinematographer Ellen Kuras; and the artist Shirin Neshat.
IHT Rendezvous: Romanian Film Takes Top Prize at the Berlinale
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IHT Rendezvous: Romanian Film Takes Top Prize at the Berlinale
