Golden award to Panahi, silver – to Mykhalchuk!
The prizes have been awarded on the Berlinale – a major one went to a Ukrainian filmmaker, for the first time since independence
The jury, presided by Darren Aronofsky, a renowned American director, made a predictable decision in regard to the Golden Bear for the best movie – Taxi by Iranian Jafar Panahi. In lieu of the author the prize was presented to his niece, Hana Saeidi, who herself played an episodic, but prominent role in the film. As much as he wanted to, Panahi could not arrive in person – being indicted of anti-government activity he was barred from filming, talking to press or going abroad for the next 20 years. However, Taxi was his third movie made after the sentence had been announced; a rare occasion when ethical and aesthetic reasons for supporting the film do not contradict each other.
In contrast to the Golden Bear, the allocation of the second most important award, the Jury Grand Prix, was apparently a political decision. The Club by Pablo Larrain (Chile) is primarily an anti-Catholic pamphlet, but it severely lacks in director’s and camera work departments; nevertheless, Western intellectuals considered it worthwhile to pique Vatican City once again. Another Chilean, a well-known documentary filmmaker Patricio Guzman, received the Silver Bear for Best Script, along with the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury, for The Pearl Button, which narrates the history of his country, of the indigenous people of Patagonia and of the dictatorship of Pinochet.
As anticipated, the Alfred Bauer Prize for opening new perspectives on cinematic art went to Guatemalan Jayro Bustamante and his debut Ixcanul Volcano. While the movie employed only amateur actors, the Mayan Indians, Bustamante did not give in to the temptation of portraying the allures of folklore or landscape exotica. For him the story, of which the actors must be a natural and coherent part, comes out as the most important part of the film, and the nature’s beauty is appropriate only in line with the character’s lives. However, the Best Actor and Best Actress awards, quite surprisingly, went not to Ixcanul Volcano performers, but to Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling for their performance as an elderly couple in a boring and utterly emotionless drama 45 Years by Andrew Haigh (the UK).
Some of the prizes were split by the jury. Thus, Malgorzata Szumowska (with the film Body, a comedy-drama from Poland) and Radu Jude (with the historical drama Aferim!, Romania) shared the award for Best Director. And the decision for the Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution for Cinematography (this category usually honors directors of photography) came as a good news for Ukraine. The prize was also split, with part of it going to Sturla Brandth Grovlen (Victoria, a criminal thriller from Germany) and another to Russian Evgeniy Privin and Ukrainian Serhii Mykhalchuk (Under Electric Clouds by Alexey German Jr., a joint Russian-Ukrainian-Polish production).
Serhii Mykhalchuk was born July 13, 1972 in Lutsk. In 1995 he graduated from the Kyiv Karpenko-Kary Theatrical Institute. Having started his career working with music videos and commercials, he has been filming television shows, documentaries, and full-length feature films in Russia and Ukraine since the late 1990s. And often Mykhalchuk’s work is the only thing that is able to save an otherwise mediocre film from total oblivion. Before this year’s Berlinale, the most significant award was given to him at San Sebastian film festival for The Lover, a 2002 movie by Valery Todorovsky. This Silver Bear is the first prize of such level that would ever have been presented to a Ukrainian filmmaker since independence. The Day congratulates Serhii and the entire cinematic industry of Ukraine in general with this achievement.
A more detailed account of the Berlinale events will appear in our next issues.
