Romania at the Berlin Film Festival
The Romanian production “Monsters directed by Marius Olteanu has won the Tagesspiegel Readers Jury Award at the Berlin Film Festival.
Roxana Vasile, 18.02.2019, 14:02
The 69th edition of the Berlin International Film Festival, one of the biggest in the world, took place this year between the 7th and the 17th of February. “Monsters”, the only Romanian production in the festival and which was screened in the Forum sidebar, won the Tagesspiegel Reader’s Jury award. It was part of a selection dedicated to experimental projects focusing on avant-garde cinema, essays and political reportage. “Monsters” depicts the last 24 hours in the love story of a couple who have been together for almost ten years. Dana and Arthur each fights their own interior monsters and the day is coming when they must decide if giving up is proof of real love. The director Marius Olteanu was pleasantly surprised that his film was given four additional screenings after winning the award. It’s a film that speaks at a micro level, the level of the couple, about what we live at the level of society, said Marius Olteanu.
The winner of the much-coveted Golden Bear trophy for best film went to the film “Synonymes” directed by Nadav Lapid, which follows a young Israeli man who tries to hide his origins when he moves to Paris. The French director Francois Ozon took the Grand Jury Prize for his film “By the Grace of God”, a drama about the sexual abuse committed by members of the clergy against minors, while the German filmmaker Angela Schanelec won the Golden Bear award for best director for her film “I Was at Home, but”. Yong Mei and Wang Jingchun were rewarded for their performances in a family saga in which they play a couple who struggle with the vicissitudes of life in China in the wake of the Cultural Revolution.
The Golden Bear for best short film went to “Umbra”, by Florian Fischer and Johannes Krel, while the Silver Bear went to the film “Blue Boy” directed by Manuel Abramovich, with Romanian contributions from Catalin Cristutiu as editor and Bogdan Georgescu as creative producer. Also, the British actor Charlotte Rampling got the lifetime achievement award.
In previous years, Romania has won some important prizes in Berlin, including the Golden Bear for best film: first in 2013, with “Child’s Pose” by Calin Peter Netzer, and again last year with “Touch Me Not” by Adina Pintilie, who also won the award for best debut. The fact that, compared with previous years, the Romanian presence at this year’s Berlin Film Festival was much reduced takes nothing away from the value of Romanian filmmakers from the so-called “new wave”, which includes names such as Cristi Puiu, Corneliu Porumboiu, Catalin Mitulescu, Radu Muntean, Cristian Mungiu, Tudor Giurgiu and Radu Jude.
