GERMANY: A low-budget film about the lasting consequences of mass rape during the Bosnian war has won the Golden Bear at a Berlin Film Festival dominated this year by political entries.
Germans won the top acting awards while Briton Michael Winterbottom was awarded for his direction of The Road to Guantanamo, to be shown next month on British television.
Grbavica, by director Jasmila Zbanic, is a Bosnian mother-daughter story with a crucial difference: while the daughter believes her father was a war hero who died fighting the Serbs, he was in fact a soldier who raped her mother. "I just want to use this opportunity to remind us all that the war in Bosnia was over some 13 years ago and the war criminals Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic still live in Europe freely," said Zbanic (31).
Politics was inescapable at the festival, from the oil corruption of Syriana to women's rights in the Iranian soccer feature Offside, which took home a Silver Bear award, along with Danish drama A Soap.
German actor Moritz Bleibtreu was honoured for his role as a sex addict in a disappointing adaptation of Michel Houellebecq's novel The Elementary Particles.
Neil Jordan's Breakfast on Pluto came third in the Berlinale audience award.