Pauline Malefane in Carmen in Khayelitsha
The 2005 Berlin Film Festival's Golden Bear has been awarded to a South African production, the Xhosa-language Carmen in Khayelitsha. Directed by Mark Dornford-May and starring Pauline Malefane (right), the film is a modernized version of Georges Bizet's opera set in a South African slum.
Headed by Roland Emmerich, the seven-member Berlin jury gave the runner-up Silver Bear to Gu Changwei's Peacock, which depicts the daily life of a working-class family in a small Chinese town.
Marc Rothemund was voted best director for Sophie Scholl – The Final Days, the story of the young German resistance leader who was eventually caught by the Nazis and beheaded along with her brother.
Julia Jentsch, the young anti-Nazi fighter in Sophie Scholl, won as best actress, while Lou Taylor Pucci received the best actor Silver Bear for his role as an insecure teenager in the U.S.-made Thumbsucker.
Hany Abu-Assad's controversial French-German-Dutch-Palestinian co-production Paradise Now, the story of two Palestinian suicide bombers, had been considered a front runner for the Golden Bear, but ended up with the Blue Angel Award for best European film.
Photos: Berlinale 2005