The Silver Bear won for the "artistic contribution" by Helene Louvart who directed photography goes to "Disco Boy", the only Italian film in competition at the Berlin Film Festival.
«I dedicate this award to my family and friends who have always known me and who know how long the journey has been to get here, but I also dedicate it to my city Taranto, because you always carry it inside you for better or for worse» , said 39-year-old director Giacomo Abbruzzese.
The plot unfolds between psychedelic, shamanic tones, electronic music, with the descent into hell and the redemption of a migrant with guilt and who identifies too much with the enemy.
Shot between Europe and Africa and with the soundtrack signed by the electronic music star Vitalic, the film tells the story of Alex (Franz Rogowski, UNDINE, FREAKS OUT), a young man who flees Belarus with a friend of his and enters clandestinely into France. He is now a sans papier and so he marries the hell of the French foreign legion which after five years guarantees him citizenship.
In the Niger Delta, the guerrilla Jomo fights against the oil companies that threaten the survival of his village while his sister Udoka, meanwhile, dreams of escaping. It is fate that the lives of these three people will intertwine by changing their lives.
«I think we liked the staging, the visual aspect at the service of an idea where you make a sort of internal journey together with an external one, in short, a double journey. Add to this that it is an anomalous war film,” added the director.
The Golden Bear was instead awarded to "Sur l'Adamant" by the French director Nicholas Philibert. A documentary set on a wooden barge on the Seine, in the heart of Paris, where his lovable "crazy" people meet every day, people suffering from mental illness.
The film festival opened with the video address of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
Other awards were presented to Philippe Garrel, Silver Bear for directing "Le Grand Chariot". To little Sofia Otero, 8 years old, the youngest winner in the history of the Berlinale, the Silver Bear for best actress for her performance in "20,000 species de abejas" by the Basque director Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren. And "Roter Himmel" by German director Christian Petzold, which won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize.
