Hungarian slaughterhouse love story wins Berlin fest Golden Bear

BERLIN - Hungary’s “On Body and Soul”, a tender love story set in a slaughterhouse, won the Golden Bear top prize Sunday at the Berlin film festival, Europe’s first major cinema showcase of the year. The drama by Ildiko Enyedi, one of four female filmmakers in competition, features graphic scenes in an abattoir set against the budding romance of two people who share a recurring dream. The win marked an upset at the 11-day Berlinale, where a European refugee comedy by cult Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismaki, “The Other Side of Hope”, had been the odds-on favorite. Kaurismaki took the Silver Bear for best director. The runner-up jury prize went to Franco-Senegalese filmmaker Alain Gomis for “Felicite” about a Kinshasa nightclub singer who has to scrape together funds to pay for her son’s treatment after a serious road accident. South Korea’s Kim Min-Hee, the star of Hong Sang-Soo’s intimate drama “On the Beach at Night Alone” about a failed love affair with a director, won best actress. And Austria’s Georg Friedrich scooped best actor for his role in the German drama “Bright Nights” as a mourning father who takes his teenage son on a road trip through Norway. ‘Fight the dark ages’ Best screenplay went to another favorite of the festival, “A Fantastic Woman” by Chile’s Sebastian Lelio, starring transgender actress Daniela Vega. Lelio, joined on stage by Vega, said the film about a singer fighting for her right to attend the funeral of her much older lover was a call for tolerance in trying times. “We have to fight the dark ages with beauty, with elegance, with poetry,” he said. Best documentary, awarded for the first time at the festival, was picked up by Palestinian director Raed Andoni for “Ghost Hunting”. The film recreates a notorious Israeli interrogation center - and has ex-prisoners re-enact experiences in a bid to free them of their demons. “We still have 7,000 Palestinians living in those jails... They never get the recognition as I do,” said Andoni, who also served time behind bars in Israel. Capping a politically charged year at the festival, US documentary jury member Laura Poitras (“Citizenfour”) said filmmakers must stand up for basic freedoms. “Yesterday the president of the United States described the press as the enemy of the people,” she said, referring to a tweet by Donald Trump on Saturday. “As documentary filmmakers we’re here to say that we’re the enemy of nationalism and of exclusion.” - AFP