Mother Diop’s film “Dahomey” received the main prize at the Berlinale

The 74th International Film Festival ends in Berlin. In addition to actors and directors, the popular Ukrainian writer Oksana Zabuzhko served on the jury of the main Berlinale competition.

The main award of the festival, the “Golden Bear”, went to the film “Dahomey” by the French director Mata Diop.

Diop talks about the return to Benin of 26 works of art from the treasury of the Dahomey kings, which were taken to Europe at the end of the 19th century and were in the collection of the Paris museum on the Branly embankment until 2021.

Thousands of works of Dahomey art are still in European museums, Benin demands their restitution, and a significant part of the film is occupied by fragments of the debate held in Cotonou about the meaning of returned treasures and the vicissitudes of historical memory.

Nelson Carlos de los Santos Arias received the Silver Bear for Best Director. In the film “Pepe”, he tells the story of a hippopotamus taken from Namibia to Colombia for the private menagerie of drug lord Pablo Escobar.

In the second “Collision” competition, designed to encourage innovative cinema, the main award went to Guillaume Caillot and Ben Russell’s documentary film “Direct Action” about scenes from the life of the ZAD commune near Nantes. Its members are engaged in agriculture and have been fighting for two decades against the intention of the local authorities to build an airport and a large reservoir.

Russian-made films did not participate in the Berlinale.

Martin Scorsese received the award for his contribution to cinematography. His last film “Killers of the Flower Moon” received ten nominations at the “Oscar”. The premiere of the documentary “Made in England” took place in Berlin, in which Scorsese reflects on the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and talks about his friendship with Powell. The “Golden Bear” at the Berlinale was presented to the American director by his German colleague Wim Wenders.

Director Edgar Reitz (b. 1932) received the honorary award “Camera Berlinale”. The series of films “Rodyna” brought him fame. Reitz’s new film “Kinochas_23”, which premiered at the Berlinale, is based on a series of lectures on directing skills that he gave to a group of schoolgirls in 1968 in Munich. 55 years later, the schoolgirls gather again and remember the past.

Berlinale 2024 is the last festival that was organized by the team headed by Marietta Ryssenbeck (director) and Carlo Shatrian (artistic director). The decision to replace Shatrian in this post was met with a protest campaign, a letter asking not to fire him was signed by many famous cinematographers, including Martin Scorsese. However, in December 2023, the Minister of Culture of Germany, Claudia Roth, announced that the new artistic director of the Berlinale will be Trisha Tuttle, who headed the London Film Festival.

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