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Sebastian Stan and Emily Watson take acting honors at the awards for the 74th Berlinale on Saturday night.
By Scott Roxborough
Europe Bureau Chief
Dahomey, a documentary from French-Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop, has won the Golden Bear for best film at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival.
The multifaceted docu-fictional essay explores the return, in November 2021, of plundered royal treasures of the African Kingdom of Dahomey from Paris to the present-day Republic of Benin, examining the complicated response of those in Benin, whose culture has developed for more than a century without these artifacts.
While taking the stage to accept her award, Diop made a direct political statement, calling out, “I stand with Palestine!”
Jury president, the Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave and Black Panther actor Lupita Nyong’o, announced the Golden Bear winner from the stage of the Berlinale Palast Saturday night. Nyong’o is the first Black and first African to chair the Berlinale jury.
Dahomey is only the second African film to win the top prize at Berlin, following Mark Dornford-May’s South African operatic drama Breathe Umphefumlo (U-Carmen eKhayelitsha) in 2015. Art house streamer Mubi picked up Dahomey for North America and much of the world in a deal announced on Friday.
Dahomey is also the second documentary in a row to take Berlin’s Golden Bear, following On the Adamant from French filmmaker Nicolas Philibert last year.
Hong Sangsoo, a regular on the Berlinale award stage — he won back-to-back-to-back Silver Bears in 2020 (The Woman Who Ran), 2021 (Introduction) and 2022 (The Novelist’s Film) — made it a quartet on Saturday, winning the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize for A Traveler’s Needs. The project marks his third collaboration with French star Isabelle Huppert, following In Another Country (2012) and Claire’s Camera (2017). Finecut is selling A Traveler’s Needs internationally.
Best director honors went to Dominican filmmaker Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias for Pepe, an unclassifiable mash-up of documentary and fiction about a hippo brought to Colombia by drug king Pablo Escobar. (The film is narrated by the hippo.) Bruno Dumont’s sci-fi spoof L’ Empire, which Memento International is selling, took the Silver Bear jury prize.
MCU alum Sebastian Stan won Berlin’s Silver Bear for best leading performance for his role in Aaron Schimberg’s twisted New York-set fable A Different Man, in which he plays a man who undergoes radical plastic surgery and begins to question his own identity.
“This is my first European film festival,” said Stan. “For a little boy from Romania, that is very meaningful for me, so thank you.” A24 produced A Different Man and is releasing stateside.
Emily Watson won the best supporting actor honor for playing a terrifying nun alongside star Cillian Murphy in Tim Mielants’ Irish-set drama Small Things Like These. FilmNation is handling the movie’s international sales.
In a gesture to the political debate surrounding the war in Gaza, which has overshadowed much of the discussion around cinema at this year’s Berlinale, the prize for best documentary went to No Other Land. The project, directed by a collective of Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers, is a sobering look at the Israeli government’s attempts to expel Palestinians in Masafer Yatta, a rural village in the occupied West Bank. No Other Land screened in Berlin’s Panorama sidebar section, where it won the audience award for best documentary. Taking to the stage, two of the film’s directors, one Israeli and one Palestinian, called on the “powerful people in this room” to call for a ceasefire in Gaza and to “stop the occupation” of the West Bank by Israel. At the very least, one of the directors said, Germany should stop supplying weapons to Israel.
Juliana Rojas, who won the Encounters prize for best director for Cidade; Campo, also used the Berlinale stage to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, as did Ben Russell and co-director Guillaume Cailleau, winners of the best film prize in the Encounters section for Direct Action. “We are against the genocide,” Russell said.
Two of this year’s critical favorites, Matthias Glasner’s German melodrama Sterben (Dying) and The Devil’s Bath, an Austrian horror film from Goodnight Mommy directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, both picked up Silver Bears. Glasner received one for best screenplay and The Devil’s Bath cinematographer Martin Gschlacht took home a trophy for the “outstanding artistic contribution” category. The Match Factory is selling Sterben worldwide, with Playtime handling The Devil’s Bath.
This is the fifth and final Berlinale under the artistic direction of Carlo Chatrian, who, along with Berlinale managing director Mariëtte Rissenbeek, will be leaving after this year and replaced by former London Film Festival director Tricia Tuttle taking over a dual role.
Golden Bear for Best Film
Dahomey dir. Mati Diop
Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize
A Traveler’s Needs dir. Hong Sangsoo
Silver Bear Jury Prize
L’ Empire dir. Bruno Dumont
Silver Bear for Best Director
Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias for Pepe
Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance
Sebastian Stan for A Different Man
Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance
Emily Watson for Small Things Like These
Silver Bear for Best Screenplay
Matthias Glasner for Sterben (Dying)
Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution
Martin Gschlacht for the cinematography for The Devil’s Bath
Best Film
Direct Action dirs. Guillaume Cailleau, Ben Russell
Best Director
Cidade; Campo dir. Juliana Rojas
Special Jury Award (ex aequo)
The Great Yawn of History dir. Aliyar Rasti, Some Rain Must Fall dir. Qiu Yang
Cu Li Never Cries dir. Pham Ngoc Lan
No Other Land dirs. Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor
Golden Bear Best Short Film
An Odd Turn dir. Francisco Lezama
Silver Bear Jury Prize
Remains of the Hot Day dir. Zhang Wenqian
A previous version of this story misidentified actress Emily Watson for Emma Watson.
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