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Agence France-Presse

Reuters

Wang Jingchun and Yong Mei won Silver Bears for best actor and best actress respectively for their joint lead roles as husband and wife in Chinese director Wang Xiaoshuai’s epic family saga So Long My Son at the Berlin Film Festival on Saturday.
The two play a couple who live through the vicissitudes of life in China as it emerges from the chaos of the Cultural Revolution and rises to become today’s economic superpower.
“This is the tragedy of a woman, a family that loses its son,” Yong said as she picked up her trophy.
“We were happy we were able to complete the film.”
Jury president Juliette Binoche had earlier expressed “regret” that another Chinese film, veteran Zhang Yimou’s One Second, was pulled from the competition during the festival reportedly due to official censorship.
“Zhang has been an essential voice in international cinema,” she said.
“We need artists who help us make sense of history.”
Israeli director Nadav Lapid won the Golden Bear top prize at the film festival Saturday for Synonyms about an expatriate in Paris wrestling with his identity.

Lapid said the sexually explicit, semi-autobiographical movie, which deals with a young man who has fled Israel over its fraught political situation, might cause a “scandal” in his home country.
“But for me the film is also a big celebration … of cinema,” he said.
The runner-up jury prize went to French filmmaker Francois Ozon for By the Grace of God, a wrenching drama based on real-life survivors of rampant sexual molestation in the Catholic Church.
“The film tries to break the silence in powerful institutions,” he said.
“I want to share this prize with the victims of sexual abuse.”
Berlin 2019: So Long, My Son film review – fallout from one-child policy in China explored
German filmmaker Angela Schanelec won the best director prize for I Was At Home, But, a drama about a teenager who returns after a week-long disappearance to his mother, a grieving widow.
Schanelec, 57, was one of a record seven women among the 16 contenders in the competition at the Berlinale, Europe’s first cinema showcase of the year.
Piranhas by Italian director Claudio Giovannesi about the youth of Naples being indoctrinated at ever earlier ages into the mafia won best screenplay.

Roberto Saviano, who co-wrote the script based on his book La Paranza dei Bambini, dedicated the trophy to NGOs working to save the lives of refugees in the Mediterranean.
“The goal of the movie was to resist,” he said.
“Telling the truth has become very complex in our country so thank you.”
The awards ceremony began with a tribute and standing ovation for Swiss actor Bruno Ganz, who starred in iconic German films such as Downfall in which he played Adolf Hitler and Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire set in divided Berlin.
Synonyms is the third feature by Lapid, whose previous film The Kindergarten Teacher has been remade in the US starring Maggie Gyllenhaal.
The film, which delves into the deep ambivalence of the young Yoav about both his birth country Israel and adopted homeland of France, divided critics.
Shock in China after Zhang Yimou film set during Cultural Revolution is pulled from Berlin festival
The picture is centred around “newcomer Tom Mercier, who delivers a raw, disconcerting and altogether unpredictable turn that recalls the work of a young Tom Hardy (this includes his ability to act without any clothes on),” the Hollywood Reporter wrote.
Yoav will not allow himself to speak Hebrew so he communicates in a kind of pidgin French he has cobbled together from a dictionary.
He tells largely disinterested Parisians that has left Israel to get away from a country that he finds “repugnant, fetid, obscene, vulgar” – words that help give the film its title.
Yoav gets caught in a love triangle with a posh Left Bank couple, who lend him the mustard-coloured overcoat he wears throughout the movie.
But when he runs into financial trouble, he advertises his services as a nude model. An artist who answers the post films him on an iPad performing sexual acts on himself while shouting in Hebrew.
His periodic run-ins with Israeli security officers from the embassy prove similarly absurd.
US website Indie wire called the movie a “wilfully confrontational satire that pugnaciously mocks his own Israeli identity; the culture of France, where Lapid lived at the start of this century; and assorted conventions and decorums of art cinema”.
Last year, Romania’s Adina Pintilie won the Golden Bear for her innovative sex docudrama, Touch Me Not.


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Chinese language cinema

Wang Jingchun and Yong Mei share best actor awards at Germany’s Berlinale for Chinese saga ‘So Long My Son’

Chinese actor Wang Jingchun (L), Silver bear for Best Actor in the film “So Long, My Son” (Di Jiu Tian Chang) and Chinese actress Yong Mei, Silver Bear for best actress in the same film pose after the awards ceremony of the 69th Berlinale film festival on February 16, 2019 in Berlin. Photo: AFP

Italian director and screenwriter Claudio Giovannesi poses with the Silver Bear for best screenplay for the film “Piranhas” (La Paranza dei Bambini) during a press conference following the awards ceremony of the 69th Berlinale film festival on February 16, 2019 in Berlin. (Photo by Odd ANDERSEN / AFP)

Director Nadav Lapid poses with the Golden Bear for the film 'Synonyms' at a photo-call during the award ceremony of the 2019 Berlinale Film Festival in Berlin, Germany, Saturday, Feb. 16, 2019. (Christoph Soeder/dpa via AP)

Berlin 2019: So Long, My Son film review – fallout from one-child policy in China explored

Wang Jingchun and Yong Mei in a still from So Long, My Son. Photo: Li Tienan / Dongchun Films

Ai Liya, Xu Cheng, Li Jingjing, Yong Mei, Wang Jingchun and Qi Xi in a still from So Long, My Son, directed by Wang Xiaoshuai. Photo: Li Tienan/Dongchun Films

Chinese censorship the talk of Berlin after Zhang Yimou film pulled from festival – and no wonder

Zhang Yi and Fan Wei in a scene from One Second, directed by Zhang Yimou. The film was withdrawn from competition at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this week.

Jing Boran in a still from The Shadow Play, directed by Lou Ye.

Ugulem Sugur, Musa Yasan and Isa Yasan in a still from A First Farewell. Photo: Beijing Medoc Film Co.,Ltd.

Ji Nan in a still from A Dog Barking at the Moon. Photo: Acorn Studio

Zhou Dongyu in a still from Better Days.

Film by China’s Zhang Yimou withdrawn from Berlin festival competition days before its world premiere

Director Zhang Yimou. Photo courtesy of International Film Festival & Awards - Macao.

epa07358253 French actress Juliette Binoche attends the press conference of 'Who You Think I Am' (Celle que vous croyez) during the 69th annual Berlin Film Festival, in Berlin, Germany, 10 February 2019. The movie is presented in the Berlinale Especial at the Berlinale that runs from 07 to 17 February. EPA-EFE/ADAM BERRY

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China

World

Europe

Pair play couple who live through the Cultural Revolution and explores the fallout from the one-child policy
Israeli director Nadav Lapid won the Golden Bear top prize at the film festival for Synonyms


Pair play couple who live through the Cultural Revolution and explores the fallout from the one-child policy.


Cinema

European cinema

Wang Jingchun and Yong Mei share best actor awards at Germany’s Berlinale for Chinese saga ‘So Long My Son’

Pair play couple who live through the Cultural Revolution and explores the fallout from the one-child policy Israeli director Nadav Lapid won the Golden Bear top prize at the film festival for Synonyms

Pair play couple who live through the Cultural Revolution and explores the fallout from the one-child policy

Israeli director Nadav Lapid won the Golden Bear top prize at the film festival for Synonyms