Dahomey, a documentary from French-Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop, won the Golden Bear for best film at the 74th Berlin Film Fest.

The docu-feature essay explores the return, in November 2021, of plundered royal treasures of the African Kingdom of Dahomey from Paris to the present-day Republic of Benin.

Dahomey examines the complicated response of those in Benin, whose culture has developed for more than a century without these artifacts.

While accepting her award, Diop made a political statement: “I stand with Palestine!”

Jury president, the Oscar-winning actor Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years a Slave and Black Panther), announced the Golden Bear winner from the stage of the Berlinale Palast Saturday night.

Nyong’o is the first Black and first African to chair the Berlinale jury.

Dahomey is only the second African film to win the top prize at Berlin, following Mark Dornford-May’s South African operatic drama Breathe Umphefumlo (U-Carmen eKhayelitsha) in 2015.

Art house streamer Mubi picked up Dahomey for North America and much of the world in a deal announced on Friday.

Dahomey is also the second documentary in a row to take Berlin’s Golden Bear, after On the Adamant from French filmmaker Nicolas Philibert last year.

Hong Sangsoo won back-to-back-to-back Silver Bears in 2020 (The Woman Who Ran), 2021 (Introduction) and 2022 (The Novelist’s Film) — made it a quartet on Saturday, winning the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize for A Traveler’s Needs.

The project marks his third collaboration with French star Isabelle Huppert (Elle) following In Another Country (2012) and Claire’s Camera (2017).

Finecut is selling A Traveler’s Needs internationally.

Best director honors went to Dominican filmmaker Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias for Pepe, about a hippo brought to Colombia by drug king Pablo Escobar. (The film is narrated by the hippo.)

Bruno Dumont’s sci-fi spoof L’ Empire, which Memento International is selling, took the Silver Bear jury prize.

MCU alum Sebastian Stan won Berlin’s Silver Bear for best leading performance for his role in Aaron Schimberg’s twisted New York-set fable A Different Man, in which he plays a man who undergoes radical plastic surgery and begins to question his own identity.

A24 produced A Different Man and is releasing stateside.

Emily Watson won the best supporting actor honor for playing terrifying nun alongside star Cillian Murphy in Tim Mielants’ Irish-set drama Small Things Like These.

FilmNation is handling the movie’s international sales.

The political debate about the war in Gaza has overshadowed much of the discussion around cinema at this year’s Berlinale.

The international jury gave a special documentary prize to No Other Land. The project, directed by a collective of Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers, is a sobering look at the Israeli government’s attempts to expel Palestinians in Masafer Yatta, a rural village in the occupied West Bank.

No Other Land screened in Berlin’s Panorama sidebar section, where it won audience award for best documentary.

Taking to the stage, two of the film’s directors, one Israeli and one Palestinian, called on the “powerful people in this room” to call for a ceasefire in Gaza and to “stop the occupation” of the West Bank by Israel. At the very least, one of the directors said, Germany should stop supplying weapons to Israel.

Juliana Rojas, who won the Encounters prize for best director for Cidade; Campo, also used the Berlinale stage to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, as did Ben Russell and co-director Guillaume Cailleau, winners of the best film prize in the Encounters section for Direct Action. “We are against the genocide,” Russell said.

Glasner received one for best screenplay and The Devil’s Bath cinematographer Martin Gschlacht took home a trophy for the “outstanding artistic contribution” category. The Match Factory is selling Sterben worldwide, with Playtime handling The Devil’s Bath.

This is the fifth and final Berlinale under the artistic direction of Carlo Chatrian, who, along with Berlinale managing director Mariëtte Rissenbeek, will be leaving after this year and replaced by former London Film Festival director Tricia Tuttle taking over a dual role.