This Wednesday once again the cinema made in Mexico took the laurels in one of the most important showcases of the seventh art in the world, the Berlin International Film Festivalthe Berlinale, since the president of the jury of the 2022 edition of the film meeting in the German capital, M. Night Shyamalan, announced the decision of the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize for the Argentine-Mexican film “Manto de Gemas” , feature debut by the Bolivian director, but resident in our country, Natalia López-Gallardo.
López-Gallardo’s film, as she herself has explained, is a treatise on fear, that mist that permeates everything, in a society plagued by the tragedies that fester from organized crime, the failed state and the social fabric weakened by maximum.
“I feel incapable of making a social and political analysis of a problem as complex as the drug trafficking and violence in Mexico. Rather, I feel that what I have done is position myself in a place that is the only one in which I can position myself, which is from the situation in which I live and that I think we could all share, which is the psychological affectation as a result of the violence. My intention was to reflect the spiritual wound that Mexicans have,” the director told Imcine on the eve of the Berlinale.
As he Mexican Institute of Cinematography as the Federal Ministry of Culture congratulated the director for the distinction.
The Golden Bear goes to…
For its part, the film by Spanish director Carla Simón, “Alcarràs”, which tells the story of a Catalan farming family that is threatened by eviction from their land, won the golden bear to the best film.
Simón herself grew up on a peach farm in the town of Alcarràs and made her film with amateur actors from that area, whom she recruited at local fairs and trained to play several generations of a farming family.
When announcing the award for Best Film, the president of the festival, which returned to face-to-face screenings this year after being suspended due to the coronavirus last year, he praised “Alcarràs” for his strong performances as both young and old actors in the film.
“This is a film about family relationships, their generational tensions, gender roles and the importance of unity in times of crisis,” Simón wrote in his presentation of the film. “It is a reflection on the need for adaptation, as we portray the last days of a universe that its inhabitants believed would be eternal.”
In an emotional ceremony in which several winners dedicated their prizes to friends who died from the Covid-19the best documentary award went to “Myanmar Diaries,” made by 10 anonymous filmmakers whose films were smuggled out and portray life in Myanmar since last year’s coup.
The award for best short film went to “Trap” by recent graduate Anastasia Veber, a 20-minute portrait of the lives of young adults in Russia who party at night in search of hedonism while trying to evade police checkpoints.
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