(Berlin) “As a French-Senegalese and Afro-descendant filmmaker, I have chosen to be one of those who reject forgetting, amnesia,” said filmmaker Mati Diop on Saturday evening at the Golden Bear award ceremony at the 74th Berlinale. His film Dahomey follows another documentary, Sur l'Adamant by Frenchman Nicolas Philibert, which won the most prestigious award at the Berlin Film Festival last year.
Posted at 7:16 p.m.
The jury, chaired by Mexican-Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong'o, unanimously approved this fascinating documentary film, which focuses on the return to Benin in 2021 of 26 works of royal treasure from Dahomey looted in the 19th century. An impressionistic film with supernatural touches, like Atlantique, Mati Diop's first feature film, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2019.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY BERLINALE
Dahomey won the Golden Bear at the 74th Berlinale.
In the metaphysical questioning of the souls liberated from these uprooted sculptures and, more specifically, of the students of the University of Abomey, this atypical documentary finds its full meaning.
Only 26 of the 7,000 stolen works were returned. Is this an insult or the beginning of redemption? The question occupies this powerful, barely hour-long film about colonization and its effects on the deculturation of the African population.
Mati Diop, 41, used his platform to show his solidarity with the Palestinian people by imitating several winners and presenters at the closing ceremony, in a context where Germany unconditionally supports Israel. The words “apartheid” and “genocide” were mentioned several times, while the festival’s outgoing co-director, Mariëtte Rissenbeek, once again avoided calling for a ceasefire.
The Silver Bear for the Grand Jury Prize went to Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo for “A Traveler's Needs,” in which Isabelle Huppert plays the role of an ephemeral tourist and seductress who improvises as a French teacher in Seoul. “I would like to know what you found in this film. It is too much ! » explained this iconoclast, making the jury laugh.
Even more unusual, in his thanks and on the screen, the Frenchman Bruno Dumont and his Star Wars parody “The Empire” was crowned with the Silver Bear of the Jury Prize. This crazy comedy set in the north of France deliberately combines professional and non-professional actors with very little talent. Dumont pokes fun at the Manichaeism of science fiction films, and that's very nice, but his Star Wars among the Ch'tis runs out of steam because it tries to reach new heights of absurdity.
Emily Watson won the new gender-neutral Best Supporting Actor award for Tim Mielants' Small Things Like These. I found her a bit caricatured in her role as Superior with an iron fist who, despite her outward grace, comes across as tyrannical and unyielding. It wasn't his playmate Cillian Murphy who won the Silver Bear for Best Performance in a Leading Role. But he deserved it.
“For a little guy born in Romania, this is a huge honor,” said Sebastian Stan (the Winter Soldier of the Avengers franchise), who won the award for Aaron Schimberg’s “A Different Man.” The role of a severely disabled man who undergoes experimental facial reconstruction surgery and whose life is turned upside down, for better or worse.
Matthias Glasner won Best Screenplay for Dying, Los Santos Arias' Nelson Carlo won Best Director for Pepe and Martin Gschlacht won Best Artistic Contribution for the cinematography of The Devil's Bath.
Where we come from, the very poetic first feature film by Montrealer Meryam Joobeur didn't find a place in the charts. On the other hand, Montrealer Oksana Karpovich received a special mention from the ecumenical jury on Saturday afternoon for the disturbing documentary Intercepted.