Turkish film `Bal` wins top prize at Berlin Film Festival

Berlin: Turkish director Semih Kaplanoglu`s feature film `Bal` (Honey) bagged the top Golden Bear for Best Film prize at the 60th Berlin International film Festival here. The film, which tells the story about a young boy`s search deep inside a forest for his missing father, a beekeeper, was adjudged the best film at the festival, which concluded Saturday night. `Bal` was among the 20 films competing for the top honours.

The ten-day film festival`s Grand Prize of the Jury a silver Bear, was given by the nine-member jury headed by veteran director Werner Herzog to the Rumanian competition entry `If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle` directed by Florian Serban. The debut feature film by Serban tells the story of a 17-year-old boy nearing the end of his term in a prison for young offenders. When a group of students visit him in the prison, he takes one of the girls hostage and tries to escape - five days before his scheduled release. The silver Bear for the best direction was awarded by the jury to veteran French director Roman Polanski for his film `The Ghost Writer`. This adaptation of Robert Harris` political thriller is about a ghost writer brought in to write a memoir of a former British prime minister who discovers a global conspiracy that puts his life in danger. `The Ghost Writer` had generated considerable interest at the film festival, especially because of the director`s arrest in Switzerland last September and his on-going extradition trial on decades` old charges of sex abuse. The silver Bear for the best actress was won by Japanese actress Shinobu Terajima for her role as the wife of a disabled war veteran in the Japanese film `Caterpillar` by Koji Wakamatsu, which is set in the background of the second Sino-Japanese war. Grigori Dobrygin and Sergei Puskepalis shared the silver Bear for the best actor for their roles in the Russian film `How I Ended This Summer` by Alexei Popogrebsky. The film is about two men living at a remote research base in the Arctic. Pavel Kostomarov, the cameraman of `How I Ended This Summer` received the silver Bear for outstanding artistic achievement. The silver Bear for the best screenplay was given by the jury to Wang Quan`an and Na Jin who wrote the screenplay for the Chinese film `Tuan Yuan` (Apart Together). Wang Quan`an is also the director of the festival opener, which is about the reunion between a former Chinese soldier from Taiwan and his girl friend 50 years after their separation. This year`s Alfred Bauer Prize instituted in honour of the founder of the Berlin Film Festival for a contribution which opens new perspectives for cinematic art was awarded by the jury to Florian Serban`s debut film `If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle`. The jury`s prize for the best debut film endowed with a cash award of Euro 50,000 was given to `Sebbe` by Babak Najaf, a Swedish film about the tragic relationship between a mother and her son, which was shown in the children`s and youth films section `Generation 14 plus`. The Golden Camera award was won by Japanese director Yoji Yamada whose film `Otouto` (About Her Brother) was the Berlinale`s closing film. PTI