Berlinale Prize Winners: Claire Denis, Carla Simón, and Isabelle Huppert

by Nathaniel R

The annual Berlinale proved to be yet another excellent film festival for female filmmakers. France's legendary auteur Claire Denis (Beau Travail, White Material, 35 Shots of Run) took Best Director for her latest Both Sides of the Blade (pictured above) which stars two incredible French titans of acting, Vincent Lindon and Juliette Binoche. This is Denis' very first prize at one of the Big Three European festivals if you can believe it. The top prize of the festival, the Golden Bear, went to rising Catalan filmmaker Carla Simón (Summer 1993) for her ensemble drama Alcaras about a family who may lose their farm.  

Complete list of winners after the jump and we do expect at least a couple of them to pop up in next year's International Feature Film Oscar race since the buzz often starts at Berlin for some entries to that category...

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Showbiz History: The Warriors, Like a Virgin, and Berlinale Winners

9 random things that happened on this day, February 9th, in showbiz history...

1964 It's the first appearance of The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show. 73 million people were watching.

1971 Supposedly All in the Family's fifth episode "Judging Books by Covers", airing on this night, is the first on American TV dealing with homosexuality. Archie Bunker mistakenly assumes a guy he meets is gay and then later learns that one of his best friends actually is.

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Berlin: Fire at Sea Wins the Golden Bear

 Amir Soltani is covering the Berlin International Film Festival.

The Berlinale officially closes today. Although we’re not yet finished with our coverage – a couple of interviews still to come – it’s the perfect time to look back and discuss the festival’s awards. In my review of Gianfranco Rosi’s exquisite new film, Fire at Sea, I noted that it would be a shock for the film to leave the Berlinale empty-handed. Lo and behold, the festival’s jury, headed by Meryl Streep, agreed with the sentiment, and rightly awarded the competition’s best film with the Golden Bear.

The festival’s unofficial theme – repeated across press releases and around the festival hub – was refugees and immigrants. Much as Rosi’s impressive constructed, morally compelling and profoundly moving film might have benefited from that, however, it was hard to ignore the fact that its reception by critics and audiences simply towered above any other film playing in any program in Berlin. The theory among critics was that if another film were to win, it would be Mia Hansen-Løve’s L’Avenir would be it. With critics near-unanimously calling it the director’s best work yet, and with four women on a jury of seven, the Isabel Huppert vehicle was likely to find favour, and indeed it nabbed the best director prize. [More...]

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Berlin: 'Alone in Berlin' and 'Soy Nero'

 Amir Soltani is covering the Berlin International Film Festival. Two new reviews today.

ALONE IN BERLIN (Pérez)
Alone in Berlin, adapted from the novel ‘Every Man Dies Alone’ by Hans Falada and directed by former actor Vincent Pérez, is about justice, and you best believe that. The film wants you to know this so badly that it goes out of its way to shoehorn into the film a scene in which, one character tells his wife, “I have a mistress whom I obey, and her name is justice.” In another scene, a man proves his son’s involvement in the war by showing a picture of him in uniform in Poland, holding a dead child, as though he’s a trophy hunted on a Safari trip. If these examples pain you with their lack of subtlety, you won’t be delighted to know that they are only two of many, many instances in which the film throws its themes forcefully in your face.

Otto (Brendan Gleeson) and Anna Quangel (Emma Thompson) are a couple living in Berlin during the second world war. The film opens with a battle scene, in which their young son is shot to death on the field. Back in the German capital, to cope with the grief, Otto begins to write small anti-regime postcards, calling for a free press and the downfall of Hitler, and locate them at random places across the city with the help of his wife. As the cards begin to gain more attention in the repressed environment of the time, the Führer gets understandably upset, and Kommissar Escherich (Daniel Brühl) is assigned to find the culprit. [More...]

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Cynthia Nixon's Emily Dickinson Dwells In Possibility of Miranda Hobbes

Daniel Crooke here, new contributor. As daily updates make their way stateside from the Berlinale, certain titles that can’t help but infiltrate and overtake your curiosity. One such film is Terence Davies’ A Quiet Passion. What a time to be alive when the promise of a film starring the soulfully efflorescent Cynthia Nixon as the spiritually untethered Emily Dickinson exists on this planet. While reactions to the poet’s biopic have been highly mixed, the overlapping of these two mustang personas is an undeniable attraction.

Obviously much of Dickinson’s public face continues to be debated – that’ll happen when you like what you like and forget the rest – but there’s still a respected wealth of fascinating, cogent theories about the manner in which Emily lived. And no study needs a peer review about how perfectly Nixon’s signature role encapsulates this iconoclast who ditched polite society for a personal universe of her own reckoning.

The ultimate role research for Emily Dickinson lies in playing the sage and self-determined Miranda Hobbes for six seasons of Sex and the City. Six reasons why after the jump...

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