Iranian Mohammad Rasoulof’s film ‘There is No Evil’ won the Golden Bear in Berlin on Saturday, at the end of a 70th political and committed edition which also rewarded a film on abortion. The director was absent: he is prohibited from leaving his country.
The film crew received a standing ovation at the closing ceremony of the Berlinale, marked by the absence of the director, already awarded in Cannes.
Italian actor Elio Germano and German actress Paula Beer were rewarded on Saturday evening at the Berlinale, for their respective roles in ‘Hidden away’, portrait of a marginal Italian painter and ‘Undine’, aquatic fable and in love.
‘I want to dedicate this award to all the marginalized and to Antonio Ligabue,’ said the 39-year-old Italian actor, who was playing two films in competition (‘Favollace’ by Fabio and Damiano D’Innocenzo and ‘ Hidden away ‘by Giorgio Diritti for which he was awarded). He embodied the painter Antonio Ligabue (1899-1965), suffering from physical and mental disorders.
Elio Germano was already rewarded in Cannes in 2010 (tied with Javier Bardem) for ‘La nostra vita’ by Daniele Luchetti, describing Italy of small schemes, the informal economy and every man for himself.
He started his career at 14 years old in the troupes of amateurs from different theaters in Rome, before sharing his career between television and cinema. He was notably one of the gang members in Michele Placido’s ‘Romanzo criminale’.
On the female side, the interpretation prize went to the German Paula Beer, revealed in 2016 in ‘Frantz’ by François Ozon and also seen in the ‘Bad banks’ series. At only 25, the actress, often compared to Romy Schneider, leads a career between France and Germany and already has ten years of cinema behind her.
As a teenager, she made herself known by playing the main role in the German-Estonian film ‘Poll’, released in 2010. Four years later, she obtained a role in ‘Diplomatie’ by Volker Schlöndorff, with André Dussollier and Niels Arestrup , but his scenes are cut during editing.
A setback before establishing itself soon after, in the role of Anna, a young German woman who falls in love with the mysterious French friend of her fiancé, who fell on the front during the First World War, in ‘Frantz’.
In Germany, she then filmed in ‘The work without an author’ by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (‘The Lives of Others’) and ‘Transit’ by Christian Petzold, with whom she collaborated again for ‘Undine’. She found the actor Franz Rogowski there, to whom she already gave the reply in ‘Transit’.
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