Claire Denis receives the award for best director for With love and determination and the German-Turkish actress Meltem Kaptan that of the interpretation.
The Berlinale made the voice of the countryside and that of women heard by crowning the Spanish film Alcarras by director Carla Simón, in an almost exclusively female list. By winning the Golden Bear, the 35-year-old filmmaker becomes the third young director in a row to be crowned by a major festival, after the French Julia Ducournau, Palme d’Or at Cannes for Titanium and La Mostra crowns The Event of the Franco-Lebanese Audrey Diwan for the event. If we add to this the triumph at the Oscars 2021 of the American Chloé Zhao, with nomadland, these most prestigious awards in the cinema world seem to testify, five years after the start of the Weinstein affair, to a desire to rebalance within an industry long dominated by men.
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In Berlin, the prize list is almost exclusively female, with a prize for the best realization to the Frenchwoman Claire Denis for With love and determination and a gender-neutral award for best performance to German-Turkish actress Meltem Kaptan.
“It’s a trend that’s here to stay because the benchmarks are changing. When I was a student, it was difficult to refer to female directors, but little by little it is changing, because there is a will, because we are half of humanity and therefore we must tell half stories. But we’re not there yet“, declared Carla Simón in a press conference, stressing that the cinema still had a minority of female directors and producers.
“Our Dependence on the Land”
The Golden Bear also sheds light on the future of agriculture and peasants, jostled by modernity. Alcarras is an ode to smallholders, which takes place over a summer in a corner of Catalonia bathed in sunshine. The president of the jury, the American director M. Night Shyamalan, praised the performance of the actors who knew “show the tenderness and the fight of a family“, and highlight”our dependence on the land“.
The director, who lost her parents at a very young age and grew up near this small town of Alcarràs, thanked her family, “who grew peaches and without whom (she) would never have been so close to this world“. Carla Simón, who had already received a first film award in Berlin for Summer 1993 (2017), also dedicated its award to “small families of farmers who cultivate their land every day to fill our plates“.
In Alcarras, it is this endangered world that invades the screen, all the more glaringly true as the actors are non-professionals, recruited from the surrounding area. The film follows the Solé family, who for three generations have cultivated hundreds of peach trees on the land of wealthy landowners. But the latter want to uproot the trees to install solar panels there, and propose to the Solé to adapt to this new situation, or to leave. The head of the family, Quimet, refuses to see his world disappear. Around him, it is a whole fragile family balance, from children to the elderly, which threatens to collapse. The cast, of non-professional actors, is filmed with great tenderness.
The film is both moving and profound on the issues of the forced modernization of the countryside or the conflict between economy and ecology. Carla Simón succeeds Romanian Radu Jude, Golden Bear last year, after a week of competition at a brisk pace due to the Covid.
The organizers can congratulate themselves on having, at the cost of drastic sanitary measures, brought the competition to an end after an ersatz festival, online only, last year. The only downside: the absence of a big name in cinema, the Frenchwoman Isabelle Huppert, who was to receive a reward for her entire acting career. Tested positive for Covid-19 the day before, she had to give up the trip to Berlin.
Awards
Golden Bear for Best Film: Alcarras by the Spaniard Carla Simón
Grand Jury Prize: The Novelist’s Film by Hong Sangsoo.
Jury Prize: Robe of Gems by Natalia Lopez Gallardo.
Best Achievement: Claire Denis for With love and determination.
Best Performance in a Leading Role: Meltem Kaptan in Rabiye Kurnaz vs. George W. Bush.
Best Performance in a Supporting Role: Laura Basuki in Nana.