Berlin International Film Festival ends
Published 19 February, 2007, 11:04
Twenty two films fought for the main prize at this year's Berlin Film Festival. Jury members were unanimous in deciding to present the Golden Bear for best film to a Chinese movie “Tuya's Marriage”.
Actress Yu Nan plays the title character, a herdswoman in Inner Mongolia who's trying to resist pressure to leave her pastures and move to the city as China's industrial power grows. Tuya seeks a man who can help to look after her sick husband and two children.“The main reason for me to make this film was the growing environmental problems in Mongolia – the desertification. They are forced to leave their traditional lifestyle and lose their traditional way of life and I felt the urgent need of someone going there and documenting this for the future and to see the beauty of this kind of lifestyle,” says film director Wang Quan'an.The best actress prize of the festival went to German actress Nina Hoss. She plays a young woman who quits her job and broken marriage and moves from Eastern Germany to the West. The Silver Bear for best actor went to Argentina's Julio Chavez for “The Other”. The movie tells the story of a man who decides to take on a new identity amid a crisis triggered by his wife's pregnancy and his father's illness.The Best Director prize went to U.S born Israeli Joseph Cedar for “Beaufort”. It's a movie about a group of young Israeli solders defending an outpost in the heart of enemy territory in Lebanon.“It is a story about how wars end, about the complicated feelings that are a part of lowering the flag, leaving a mountain and returning home,” says director Joseph Cedar.The end of the 57th film festival in Berlin comes just a week before the world's most recognised film awards – the Oscar's.discuss it
