Romanian director Florin Serban won two prizes for “Eu cand vreau sa fluier, fluiere” (If I Want To Whistle, I Whistle), about a young man in a youth detention center who is facing up to the new realities that have emerged in the wake of the fall of Communism across Eastern Europe.
The Berlinale’s best director award went to controversial Polish-French director Roman Polanski for best director for his thriller “The Ghost Writer” Saturday.
However, Polanski was not on hand to accept the prize as the 76-year-old the Oscar-winning director is at present under house arrest in his Swiss chalet facing US extradition moves for a 1977 underage sex case.
The festival’s international jury, headed up by veteran German director Werner Herzog, awarded the Silver Bear for best actress to Shinobu Terajima for Japanese director’s Koji Wakamatsu’s anti-war film “Caterpillar”.
Grigori Dobrygin and Sergei Puskepalis shared the Silver Bear for best actor, who played two men attempting to carve out a relationship of trust against the sweeping landscape of a deserted Arctic island in Russian director Alexei Popgrebsky’s “How I Ended This Summer”.
Wang Quan’an and Na Jin won a Silver Bear for scriptwriting for Tuan Yuan (“Apart Together”). Wang also directed the film, which opened the festival and is a love story set against the tensions between Taiwan and mainland China.
Iranian-born and Swedish-based director Babak Najafi won the Berlinale prize for best first feature for “Sebbe” about the life of 15-year-old boy living in a small apartment with his single mother.
The festival’s Golden Camera award went to Japanese master director Yoji Yamada whose film “Otouto” (About Her Brother) was the Berlinale’s closing film.
