Romance set in abattoir tugs at Berlin heartstrings
Print Edition
HUNGARY’S “On Body and Soul,” a tender love story set in a slaughterhouse, won the Golden Bear top prize on Saturday at the Berlin film festival.
The drama by Ildiko Enyedi, one of four female filmmakers in competition, features graphic scenes in an abattoir set against the budding romance of two people who share a recurring dream.
The win marked an upset at the 11-day Berlinale, where a European refugee comedy by cult Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismaki, “The Other Side of Hope,” had been the odds-on favorite.
Kaurismaki took the Silver Bear for best director.
Enyedi thanked the festival for embracing her first full-length feature in 18 years.
The runner-up jury prize went to Franco-Senegalese filmmaker Alain Gomis for “Felicite” about a Kinshasa nightclub singer who has to scrape together funds to pay for her son’s treatment after a serious road accident.
South Korea’s Kim Min-hee, the star of Hong Sang-soo’s intimate drama “On the Beach at Night Alone” about a failed love affair with a director, won best actress.
And Austria’s Georg Friedrich scooped best actor for his role in the German drama “Bright Nights” as a mourning father who takes his teenage son on a road trip through Norway.
Best screenplay went to another favorite of the festival, “A Fantastic Woman” by Chile’s Sebastian Lelio, starring transgender actress Daniela Vega.
Lelio said the film about a singer fighting for her right to attend the funeral of her much older lover was a call for tolerance in trying times.
Best documentary, awarded for the first time at the festival, was picked up by Palestinian director Raed Andoni for “Ghost Hunting”.
The film recreates a notorious Israeli interrogation centre -- and has ex-prisoners re-enact experiences in a bid to free them of their demons.
Presenting the Golden Bear, Paul Verhoeven, who led the seven-member jury, said “On Body and Soul” was about “two people connecting in quite an amazing way.”
The enigmatic winning film features Endre and Maria, who by day work in a slaughterhouse but by night have the same dream about a male and a female deer nuzzling in a snowy forest.
Film industry bible Variety said the film “blends mournfully poetic whimsy with stabs of visceral brute reality.”
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