Jornal da Mostra
Grbavica
Nº 400 > 29ª Mostra > 18/02/2006
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Leon Cakoff, de Berlim, para o ‘Jornal da Mostra’
Edição:
Renata de Almeida e Leon Cakoff
Edição:
Renata de Almeida e Leon Cakoff
Feminine viewpoint at the festival focuses on `Grbavica`, a Greek tragedy in the Bosnia war
A woman`s authority in the person of actress Charlotte Rampling, President of the Jury, prevailed in the awards at the 56th Berlin Festival with top prize awarded to "Grbavica", Bosnian Director Jasmila Zbanic`s first film. She is 30, and the film is on the generation of youngsters born as a result of rape during the war over the break-up of Yugoslavia. Sadness translated into melancholy prevails as sadness seen from a distance. Based on the dismal reality of those who become mothers by accident, Balkan film-making produced a number of films on cases of rape and trauma among Bosnian women. We now see the facts of the drama of unwanted children as in a single-mother-fatherless daughter in the excellent "Grbavica".A second beginner, Danish director Pernille Fischer Christensen, in "Em Soap/ A Soap" shared Silber Bears with "Offside" by frequent award-winner Iranian director Jafar Panahi. Both are films focusing on defense of freedom for women. The Danish film follows the dire straits in which an unmarried woman finds herself when, in a new apartment, she is solidary towards a transexual neighbor. The Danish film presents a raw diagnostic scan of a society apparently based on harmony and social progress.
Panahi focuses on the drama of a group of Iranian teenagers who try to gain entrance to a football stadium in Iran and are arrested because they are on territory forbidden to women. With an air of naïveté, Iranian cinema succeeds in describing all of the barbarism committed by the tyrannical regime of the ayatolahs.
More Silver Bears for the English double Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross, as best directors, for the fulminating "The Road to Guantanamo". The documentary-drama covers the route of terror travelled by three young Englishmen of Pakistani parents, who are arrested by mistake in Afghanistan and who will be tortured by U.S. troops at Guantanamo Bay where the U.S. have an advanced post, a military base, a colonial enclave, on a territorial protectorate on Cuban territory.
Silver Bears for best actor were awarded to extraordinarily gifted German talent in the persons of: Sandra Hüller, for "Réquiem", by Hans-Christian Schmid, a tense, hair-raising film on exorcism and possession, with best actor award to Moritz Bleibtreu for "Elementarteilchen/ The Elementary Particles", a drama on family fickleness and trauma, with much humor and scandalous revelations in German society at the end of the twentieth century. The film is expected to repeat the success of the German cult book by Michel Houellebecq, on which it is inspired.
Another German actor, Jüngen Vogel, was awarded a Silver Bear for his artistic contribution as actor, co-writer, and co-producer of "Der Freie Wille/ The Free Will", a film about tormented, morbid love - yet another in the fertile repertoire of German filmography. Sabine Timoteo, an actress that duels with Vogel in the film, also deserves to win a prize.
The last Golden Bear went to Peter Kam, a Chinese from Hong Kong, who made the exquisite "Isabella", a film with the traces of Portuguese colonialism and with Macao for a background. But the prize for the film was for the sound track brought to a close with a beautiful fado. Latin cinema distinguished itself only for the impact of great originality in "El Custodio", by Argentinian Rodrigo Moreno, from the outlook and point of view of a bodyguard in his relationship with a Minister of State he is under obligation to follow and protect - awarded the Alfred Bauer prize.
Nothing like a great jury as the saving grace to a good festival. Last year`s Berlin Film Festival winner was a calamity, with prizes awarded to a weird version of "Carmen", that nobody has ever heard about and almost nobody saw.
Translation into English: Clare Elizabeth Charity ( clarecharity@uol.com.br )
