François Ozon won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize for the film By the Grace of God. This is the eighteenth film of the cult French director, and his fifth time in the Berlinale’s Main Competition Programme. The film deals with the controversial topic of abuse in the Catholic Church, based on the true case. The indicted priest tried unsuccessfully to halt the distribution of the film in France until the end of the investigation, but Ozon argues that his film does not present any new facts, but encourages dialogue on this difficult issue. The film focuses on the intimate story of victims who face the trauma they experienced as children in their middle age.
Angela Schanelec won the Silver Bear for Best Director for the film I Was at Home, But. This is a great success for Serbian cinema as well, since the film was made in a German-Serbian co-production, and the director of photography is a young Serbian cameraman Ivan Marković. This is a poetic, enigmatic and thought provoking film, a stylized portrait of a family during emotional crisis. Critics agree that this is a film that will leave a strong and lasting impression on the audience long after the screening.
The film Stitches by Miroslav Terzić won the Europa Cinemas Label Award for Best European Film in the Panorama Programme, as well as the Panorama Audience Award (second place). This moving film is based on the true story of a tailor from Belgrade who believes her child was abducted from the maternity hospital and given for adoption. Unfortunately, there are a lot of such stories, but they rarely get their epilogue. Snežana Bogdanović plays a mother who begins a futile fight against law and bureaucracy to find her son. The rest of the cast is made up of Marko Baćović, Jovan Stojiljković, Vesna Trivalić, Dragana Varagić, Pavle Čemerikić. The film arouses great interest of audience, and the tickets for its premiere at FEST are already sold out.
