The Berlin International Film Festival (German: Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin), also called the Berlinale, is one of the world’s leading film festivals and most reputable media events. It is held in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With 274,000 tickets sold and 487,000 admissions it is considered the largest publicly-attended film festival worldwide. Up to 400 films are shown in several sections, representing a comprehensive array of the cinematic world.
Berlinale announced that US director Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids are All Right, a comedy about two teenagers brought up by a lesbian couple who go in search of their biological father won the Teddy Ward for best gay feature film.
The film stars Academy Award nominees Julianne Moore and Annette Bening as a lesbian couple whose kids seek out their biological father. The introduction of Paul (played by Mark Ruffalo, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) into their home alters family dynamics in unexpected ways.
“The Teddy for the Best Feature Film goes to Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right for being a well-crafted and humorous take on the issues facing contemporary lesbian parents and the complexity of sexuality, relationships and family bonding,” the eight-member jury said in a statement.
A total of 20 films are in the race for the festival’s top award, the Golden Bear. The award is to be handed out by the Berlinale’s main competition jury, which was headed up by veteran German director Werner Herzog.
The front runners for the coveted award include Russian director Alexei Popgrebsky’s compelling How I Ended This Summer about two men attempting to carve out a relationship of trust against the sweeping landscape of a deserted Arctic island.
Another favorite is the political thriller The Ghost Writer from Polish-French director Roman Polanski.
However, even if his film does win a prize in Berlin, Polanski is unlikely to be on hand to accept it, as the 76-year-old Oscar-winning director is at present under house arrest in his Swiss chalet facing US extradition attempts over a 1977 underage sex case.
Other leading candidate are Turkish director Semih Kaplanoglu’s slow-moving Bal (Honey) about a young boy who goes in search of his father after he fails to return home, and Iranian director Rafi Pitts’ bleak Shekarchi (The Hunter).
In Romanian director Florin Serban’s Eu cand vreau sa fluier, fluiere (If I Want To Whistle, I Whistle) Silviu is a young man facing up to the uncertainties and tensions that have emerged in the wake of the fall of Communism across Central and Eastern Europe.
For the most part, the films which have won praise at the festival have been been modern urban dramas such as Danish director Thomas Vinterberg’s almost relentlessly downcast Submarino, a tale of two brothers caught in a downward spiral of drugs and violence.
Several of the films mentioned as candidates for top prizes have also explored the impact – and sometimes clash – of contemporary, often Western, pressures on the Muslim faith, family life and identity.
This includes 2006 Golden Bear winner Jasmila Zbanic’s Na Putu (On the Path), where religion becomes a source of conflict in a relationship between a Sarajevo couple as the man moves towards a Muslim fundamentalist view of the world.
