erlin, Feb. 14— In a simple ceremony, Frances McDormand, president of the international jury of the 54th International Berlin Film Festival, awarded the Golden Bear for feature films screening in competition to “Gegen die Wand” (“Head On”) by the German director Fatih Akin.

Akin’s strong and uncompromising work is an expression of the new way of filmmaking the jury looked for this year. Not being completely satisfied by the works of the most famous directors— Angelopoulos, Rohmer, Howard, Gutiérrez Aragon, Boorman, Leconte, Loach— the jury awarded young filmmakers more for their courage in experimenting with new styles than for the results they achieved.

In his fourth feature film, the 30-year-old Akin follows his young protagonist Sibel (Sibel Kekilli), a German girl with Turkish origins, as she desperately attempts to escape from the constraints of her culture. After attempting suicide, Sibel meets Cahit (Birol Ünel), who is also a second-generation German of Turkish descent. She comes to see a fictitious marriage as an opportunity to get away from her strongly religious family. Reluctantly, Cahit agrees.

Partly shot in Hamburg, Germany, and partly in Istanbul, Turkey, the film starts as a comedy and ends up as a raw drama, with the world being seen from three different points of view: the German perspective, German-Turkish and the Turkish.

In an interview, Akin, whose family originates from Turkey, explains that the story comes from a personal experience: “Thirteen years ago, at the beginning of the ’90s, I had a Turkish girlfriend. We were not a couple, we were just friends. Her parents were similar to the family of Sibel in the movie. They were very conservative and rude. She asked me to marry her. When we cast the movie in the street, all around Germany, we had about 500 German Turkish girls, but only 10 had no problem to get naked in front of the camera. The girls who had no problems with sex had similar biographies: escape from home, unlucky marriages, family fights and prostitution. The casting was very interesting, like a documentary in its own.”

In the context of awarding daring young filmmakers, the Jury Grand Prix Silver Bear (second place), went to “El Abrazo Partido” (“Lost Embrace”) by the young Argentinean director Daniel Burman. Born in Buenos Aires in 1973, Burman’s third feature tells the story of a young Polish immigrant searching for his roots in a Buenos Aires immigrant community. Unlike the other immigrants, Ariel (Daniel Hendler) doesn’t only need a passport from Poland—he wants to understand the reason why his father left home shortly after his birth to fight a war in Israel and never returned.

“I wanted to use the film to make a statement about father-and-son relationships,” he said during the press conference. For his role in the film, Hendler was awarded with the Silver Bear for Best Actor.

The Silver Bear for Best Actress went to two actresses playing in two feature film debuts. Catalina Sandino Moreno was awarded with the prize for her role in the film “Maria Full of Grace,” the Spanish-language film by U.S. director Joshua Marston feature debut. The director said about the day he found his main actress, “it was a wonderful morning. We had been looking for three months in both New York and Colombia. I was getting depressed and was sure we would have to postpone the shoot.”

The Alfred Bauer Prize— awarded in memory of Berlinale’s founder for the best first feature film— also went to the drug-trafficking drama. The film impressed the audience with its closeness to reality and the liveliness of the young actresses playing the role of oppressed young girls from a small town near the Colombian capital, Bogotá. The fleeing women become drug-runners in the attempt to escape the strict work regime, as well as the cramped situation of their families, they are forced to endure.

Charlize Theron shared the Best Actress with Moreno for her outstanding performance in “Monster,” the feature debut by Patty Jenkins. Asked if she had any problems with her incredibly different appearance in the movie, Theron said, “It’s not possible to sink into the content of the film if you don’t abandon anything personal about yourself.”

The Silver Bear for an outstanding artistic contribution went to the Acting Ensemble of the film “Om Jag Vänder Mig Om” (“Daybreak”) by Swedish director Björn Runge. The film was also awarded with AGICOA’s Blue Angel Award for the best European film. Runge’s fourth feature film “is about the longest day in one’s life, the most important 42 hours in one’s life. The characters are in the middle of their lives. They have to take stock of their lives and change them,” Runge said during the press conference. By letting his actors improvise their feelings through the guidelines of a cute script that eschews political correctness with tons of humor and sarcasm, Runge uses three interwoven stories to make a statement about the current difficulties in being a family.

Only one prize went to an established director: the Silver Bear for Best Director went to the Korean star director Kim Ki-Duk for his film “Samaria” (“Samaritan Girl”). The story of teenage girls’ prostitution and redemption attempts keeps within Kim’s high reputation of visually magnetic, emotionally disturbing films. In an unforgettable scene, Yeo-Jin’s father (Lee Uhl) teaches her how to drive a car in a desolated and fascinating Korean hills landscape. After sin comes redemption, and Yeo-Jin (Kwak Ji-Min) will have to drive her own way toward it while her father will be paying for his own guilt.

The last Silver Bear, for Best Film Music, went to Banda Osiris for the music in the film “Primo Amore” (“First Love”) by the Italian director Matteo Garrone.

Besides the 23 films in Competition, the Berlinale showed 10 works in the Berlinale Special section, 50 films in the Panorama section, 62 films in the Forum section and the retrospectives Hollywood 1967-1976 and Selling Democracy— ”Welcome Mr. Marshall.” Maybe too much for 11 days, considering the old rule that quantity doesn’t mean quality!
staff@red-mag.com