The film Dahomey, by French-Senegalese director Mati Diop, won the Golden Bear this Saturday at the 74th edition of the Berlinale, the Berlin film festival. The film recounts the return in 2021 of 26 works of art from the kingdom of Dahomey that were in Paris to Benin, the country where that ancient African kingdom was located, and their reception by citizens who had grown up with the physical absence of that kingdom. cultural reference plundered during colonialism. The works had been looted by French troops in 1892.
“We can forget the past as an unpleasant burden that prevents us from evolving, or we can take responsibility for it, use it to move forward,” said actress Mati Diop when receiving her award. “As a Franco-Senegalese and Afro-descendant filmmaker, I have chosen to be one of those people who refuse to forget, who reject amnesia as a method,” he continued, and sent his support “to the Senegalese in their fight for democracy” and their “ solidarity with Palestine”, at a gala at the Berlinale Palast in which there were other statements calling for the end of the war in Gaza.
The award to Dahomey was awarded by the international jury of the official competition, chaired by the Kenyan-Mexican actress Lupita Nyong’o and with the Catalan director Albert Serra among its members. Nyong’o is the first black person to preside over the jury in the history of this festival, with a reputation as a politically focused event. In total, 20 films of the most diverse genres competed for the Bears in this edition.
The Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize went to Yeohaengjaui Pilyo/A traveler’s needs, by South Korean director Hong Sangsoo (South Korea), with actress Isabelle Huppert in the lead role of a Frenchwoman who teaches this language to two Korean women; while the silver Jury Prize went to L’Empire, by Frenchman Bruno Dumont, a parody of the science fiction genre about a secret war between extraterrestrial forces of good and evil over a baby born in a picturesque coastal town in France. .
Awarded as best director was the Dominican Nelson Carlos de los Santos Arias, for Pepe, an unclassifiable film about a hippopotamus that tells its life and destiny, thus rescuing the story of these African animals taken to Colombia at the whim of drug trafficker Pablo Escobar.
The Silver Bear for best lead performance went to Sebastian Stan for A different man (United States), the story of a man with a disfigured face who improves after participating in a medical experiment and changes his life radically, while the actress Emily Watson took silver for best supporting performance for Small Things Like These, in which she plays an ungodly nun in an Ireland dominated by the Catholic Church.
The Silver Bear for best script was awarded to German Matthias Glasner, for Sterben, a three-hour film about dementia, old age, alcoholism and suicide. And the Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution went to Martin Gschlacht for the cinematography of Des Teufels Bad, a film about a woman subjected to religious fanaticism in the 18th century.
This is the latest achievement of the two-headed direction of the Berlinale, formed by the Italian Carlo Chatrian (artistic director) and the Dutch Mariette Rissenbeek (executive director), which premiered at the 2020 festival, after the German Dieter Kosslick directed the contest for 18 years. The duo, which had a five-year contract, established the awards for lead and supporting performance without distinction of gender.
In 2023, Rissenbeek announced his willingness to leave the position after the 2024 edition, and Chatrian, who would have wanted to continue, finally resigned when he realized that those responsible for Culture of the Berlin Regional Government – the main financiers of the Berlinale – wanted return to the single director model. Mariette Rissenbeek said this week that her best memory is that they managed to hold Berlinale during the Covid pandemic.
In April 2024, a new stage begins in which the sole direction is recovered, which is assumed by the American Tricia Tuttle, who has recently been responsible for festivals at the British Film Institute (BFI), where she directed the London Film Festival for several years.
The Berlin festival thus ended with the official awards ceremony of the international Bears jury, which included, in addition to president Lupita Nyong’o and Albert, five other members: the American director and actor Brady Corbet, the Hong Kong director Ann Hui, the German director Christian Petzold, the Italian actress and director Jasmine Trinca, and the Ukrainian writer Oksana Zabuzhko.