‘Yellow Letters’ Wins Berlinale Golden Bear

Oscar nominee Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall) took best acting honors for her gender-shifting role in Rose, Anna Calder-Marshall and Tom Courtney won best supporting for Queen at Sea.

After drawing social media backlash for suggesting filmmakers should “stay out of politics,” German director Wim Wenders and his jury at the 76th Berlin Film Fest awarded the top prizes to overtly political films.

Top prize, the Golden Bear for best film, went to Ilker Çatak’s Yellow Letters, a drama following Derya (Özgü Namal) and Aziz (Tansu Biçer), two Turkish theater artists who lose their jobs due to political persecution from Turkey’s authoritarian government.

Though set in Ankara and Istanbul, Yellow Letters is shot entirely in Germany, with Çatak making no effort to disguise the fact, hinting that what has happened in Ankara can also happen in Berlin

Çatak is the first German director to win the Golden Bear in Berlin since Fatih Akin. Akin, like Çatak a German-born director of Turkish immigrant parents, took the top prize for Head-On in 2004.

The Silver Bear for best performance went to Oscar winning German star Sandra Hüller for her gender-bending turn in Rose, from Austrian director Markus Schleinzer, in which she plays a woman trying to pass as a man in 17th century rural Germany.

The black-and-white feature was inspired by hundreds of comparable documented cases throughout history. It’s another stand-out role for Hüller, who was Oscar-nominated for her turn in Anatomy of a Fall, and is about to make the leap to Hollywood, starring alongside Tom Cruise in Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s hotly anticipated dramedy Digger, and together with Ryan Gosling in the sci-fi feature Project Hail Mary from Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.Hüller gave jury member Ewa Puszczyńska, her producer on Zone of Interest, a smooch on the lips before accepting her trophy.

The best supporting performance prize was awarded to British acting icons Anna Calder-Marshall and Tom Courtenay for playing an aging couple in Lance Hammers Queen at Sea.

The drama, also featuring Juliette Binoche and Florence Hunt, sees Calder-Marshall playing a woman with severe dementia, with Courtenay playing her loving husband and caregiver. Queen at Sea also won the Silver Bear Jury Prize.

The awards ceremony of the 76th Berlin Film Festival got off to politically-changed start, as filmmakers used the stage to denounce Israeli military actions in the Middle East and call to “free Palestine.”

Opening the gala, Berlinale director Tricia Tuttle said that this year’s edition had “felt raw and fractured,” with grief and anger over global events within the festival community and that debate was part of democracy.

But as prizes were handed out, the political temperature rose.

Lebanese filmmaker Marie-Rose Osta, accepting the Golden Bear for best short film for Someday a Child, condemned Israeli bombings and what she called a collapse of international law.

Abdallah Alkhatib, winning the Berlinale Documentary Award for Chronicles From a Siege, brought a Palestinian flag onstage and ended his speech with call to “free Palestine.”

Syrian director Ameer Fakher Eldin, head of the short film jury, urged artists to “insist on complexity” and resist reducing festival spaces to parliamentary floors, arguing that direct statements and politically engaged bodies of work could coexist. Wenders, largely silent since the initial controversy, addressed what he called an “artificial discrepancy” between critics and organizers before announcing the competition winners, saying most of those in the room applauded the artists speaking out.

British filmmaker Grant Gee took best director for Everyone Digs Bill Evans, a fragmented bio-drama on the influential jazz pianist who was shattered by the tragic loss of his bassist in a car accident. Norwegian actor Anders Danielsen Lie (Sentimental Value) plays Bill Evans, with Laurie Metcalf and Bill Pullman as his parents.

The Grand Jury Prize went to Emin Alper’s Salvation, a drama that charts the escalation of violence in an isolated village community in the Turkish mountains following the return of an exiled clan.

Alpers speech expressed solidarity with oppressed people everywhere. “The people of Palestine, you are not alone. The people of Iran suffering under tyranny, you are not alone, the people of Kurdistan you are not alone,” he said. “And my people, you are not alone.”

But one of the most eloquent speeches on the issue of politics at this year’s Berlinale came from one of the producers of Yellow Letters. Calling out the arguments that had pitted “filmmaker against filmmaker, artist against creatives,” he reminded the crowd that “we are not enemies. We are allies. The real threat among us is not among us. It is the autocrats, the right-wing parties, the nihilists of our time. Let us not fight each other. Let’s fight them.”

The Silver Bear for best screenplay went to Nina Roza from Quebecois director Geneviève Dulude-de Celles, the story of a Bulgarian immigrant who returns to his native land to search for an 8-year-old artistic prodigy.

Anna Fitch’s experimental documentary Yo (Love Is a Rebellious Bird), in which the director uses puppets, collages and scale models to recount the life of her friend, the Swiss immigrant Yolanda “Yo” Shea, won the Silver Bear for extraordinary artistic achievement.

Full list of winner below.

GOLDEN BEAR FOR BEST FILM

Yellow Letters, dir. Ilker Çatak

SILVER BEAR GRAND JURY PRIZE
Salvation, dir. Emin Alper

SILVER BEAR JURY PRIZE
Queen at Sea, dir. Lance Hammer

SILVER BEAR FOR BEST DIRECTOR
Grant Gee, Everyone Digs Bill Evans

SILVER BEAR FOR BEST LEADING PERFORMANCE
Sandra Hüller, Rose

SILVER BEAR FOR BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE
Anna Calder-Marshall and Tom Courtenay, Queen at Sea

SILVER BEAR FOR BEST SCREENPLAY

Nina Roza, dir. Geneviève Dulude-de Celles

SILVER BEAR FOR OUTSTANDING ARTISTIC CONTRIBUTION
Yo (Love Is a Rebellious Bird), dir. Anna Fitch

PERSPECTIVES