Berlin Film Festival Awards 2007 Winners
February 19th, 2007 by Andre Soares
"When I started making films, my teacher said film should show people’s dreams. This film made my dreams come true," remarked Chinese director Wang Quan’an upon accepting the Berlin Film Festival’s Golden Bear for his rural drama Tu ya de hun shi / Tuya’s Marriage, a depiction of the social and environmental costs of China’s unbridled economic growth.
In Tuya’s Marriage, a woman (Yu Nan) living in desertifying Inner Mongolia (a territory in northern China) tries to find a new husband to take care of herself and of her family, including handicapped husband #1. "I think that it is important, particularly in this time when the economy is booming," Wang remarked, "to ponder and reflect on what we’re losing."
Tuya’s Marriage is the third Chinese film to win the Golden Bear in the last 20 years, following Zhang Yimou’s Hong gao liang / Red Sorghum (1988) and Xie Fei’s Xian hun nu / Women from the Lake of Scented Souls (1993). Last year, Jia Zhang-Ke’s Sanxia haoren / Still Life, which shows the environmental and social damage caused by the building of the Three Gorges Dam, won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
The runner-up for best film was Grand Prix winner El Otro / The Other, Argentinean director Ariel Rotter’s tale of a man who undergoes a mid-life crisis — including an attempt to find himself a new identity — upon learning that his partner is pregnant. For his performance as the middle-aged man, Julio Chávez won the Silver Bear for best actor. Critics generally gave Rotter’s leisurely paced drama a cool reception.
Beaufort, an anti-war drama that portrays the withdrawal of one Israeli army unit from southern Lebanon, brought director Joseph Cedar a Silver Bear. At the Saturday gala ceremony, Cedar expressed his hope that "our leaders will be fearful of war and have the courage to end them."
The Silver Bear for best actress went to Nina Hoss for her role as a woman who must deal with the ghosts from her past in Christian Petzold’s German drama Yella. Hoss beat favorites Yu Nan and Marianne Faithfull, who plays a grandmother-turned-sex worker in the well-received Irina Palm — which was also one of the two or three favorites to win the Golden Bear.
"I didn’t expect this at all because of the huge competition," Hoss told reporters. "I feel even more honored … to get this gift against Cate Blanchett and Marianne Faithfull … and all those great actresses I really admire."
Hoss’ win was the third in a row for German actresses at the Berlin festival. Last year, Sandra Hüller received the Silver Bear for her performance as a woman who believes herself possessed by the devil in Requiem, and the year before Julia Jentsch received the award for her star-making turn as German underground leader Sophie Scholl in Sophie Scholl - Die letzten Tage / Sophie Scholl: The Final Days.
A special Silver Bear was given to the cast of Robert DeNiro’s Cold War drama The Good Shepherd, which was coolly received in the United States. The film stars Matt Damon as a CIA spy; also in the cast are Angelina Jolie, William Hurt, Alec Baldwin, Timothy Hutton, Martina Gedeck, Tammy Blanchard, and DeNiro himself. Upon accepting the award, Martina Gedeck (one of the stars of the popular Das Leben der Anderen / The Lives of Others) dedicated the trophy to director DeNiro.
The Alfred Bauer award, named after the festival’s founder and given to "innovative" films, went to Park Chan-Wook’s Korean romantic comedy Sai bo gu ji man gwen chan a / I’m a Cyborg, But That’s Ok.
"I would like to share this award with my wife," Park declared. "She is very unhappy with my career as a director. I am not home for weeks, busy all the time and even when I am home my head is full of other thoughts. I hope she will now forgive me. When I get home, I hope she will tell our friends, ‘My husband is a director but that’s OK’."
Approximately 400 films were screened and more than 200,000 tickets were sold during the ten-day Berlin festival. Twenty-two of those films were competing for the Golden Bear.
Quote sources: Reuters, Xinhua
2007 Berlin Film Festival Awards
2006 Berlin Film Festival Awards
2005 Berlin Film Festival Awards
Art Directors Guild (ADG) Awards - 2007 Winners
Costume Designers Guild Awards - 2007 Winners
Cinema Audio Society Awards - 2007 Winners
German Film Critics Awards - 2006 Winners
13th London Australian Film Festival
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