Yellow Letters, a drama set in Turkey about creeping authoritarianism, has won the Golden Bear top prize at the Berlin film festival, after a 10-day event overshadowed by a row over politics in cinema.
The film by the German director İlker Çatak, born in Berlin to Turkish immigrants, tells the story of two luminaries of the Ankara theatre scene whose marriage comes under severe strain when they lose their jobs after falling out of political favour. Its title comes from the colour of the official dismissal notices.
Wim Wenders, the veteran German film-maker and jury president of the 76th Berlinale, said the feature gave the jury “chills” with its warning of “signs of despotism” and a threat of repression “that could possibly happen in our countries”.
“This film will be understood worldwide, I promise you,” said Wenders, who faced a storm of criticism as the festival opened over his comments on movies and activism.
Çatak, whose 2023 drama The Teachers’ Lounge was nominated for an Oscar, thanked Wenders, saying: “You are one of my teachers so it’s such an incredible thing to accept this from you.”
Yellow Letters was shot in Germany, with Berlin standing in for Ankara and Hamburg for Istanbul. The producers said this was not due to fear of reprisal from Turkish authorities but to stress the film’s “universal” themes.
The runner-up Grand Jury award went to Emin Alper’s Salvation, which is about a decades-old land feud in the Turkish mountains.
The third-place jury prize was awarded to the US director Lance Hammer for his wrenching London-based dementia drama Queen at Sea. It stars the French actor Juliette Binoche as a professor struggling with her ailing mother’s final phase of life.
The Silver Bear prize for best director went to Britain’s Grant Gee for Everybody Digs Bill Evans, a stylish black-and-white feature about the legendary jazz pianist’s struggles with addiction.
“The wonderful cast – honestly, I directed them so little,” Gee said of the ensemble including Anders Danielsen Lie, Bill Pullman and Laurie Metcalf.
The award for the best performance went to the German star Sandra Hüller in Rose, about a woman soldier in the 17th century who passes herself off as a man to get the better of a patriarchal society.
The drama, also filmed in black-and-white with touches of wry humour, is based on extensive research by the film’s Austrian director, Markus Schleinzer, into similar historical cases.
The award cements the reputation of Hüller, best known internationally for The Zone of Interest and Anatomy of a Fall, as one of Europe’s most sought-after talents.
“I find this really remarkable that I can be in a room full of people who can speak truth,” said Hüller, who first won an acting prize at the festival two decades ago for her turn in Hans-Christian Schmid’s Requiem.
Best supporting performance was shared by Britain’s Anna Calder-Marshall and Tom Courtenay in Queen at Sea for their searing, nuanced portrayal of an elderly couple navigating sexuality and self-determination as the wife’s faculties fail.
Courtenay said it was “wonderful when America seems to be turning its back on Europe” to have Hammer bring together a multinational cast and crew.
The Canadian film-maker Geneviève Dulude-De Celles, who accepted best screenplay for the immigration drama Nina Roza, said she was “resisting to keep our identity alive” against a “very invasive American culture”.
The Silver Bear for outstanding artistic contribution was awarded to the innovative documentary Yo (Love is a Rebellious Bird) by Anna Fitch and Banker White, which uses puppetry, dioramas and even insect “actors” to pay tribute to Fitch’s elderly best friend after her death.
The Berlinale is considered the most politically minded of Europe’s big film festivals next to Cannes and Venice, with programming that often champions embattled artists from repressive countries.
However, controversy erupted when a reporter asked Wenders about support for Israel by the German government, which provides about 40% of the festival’s funding, and the civic responsibilities of cinema.
Wenders said film-makers “have to stay out of politics because if we make movies that are dedicatedly political, we enter the field of politics”. He insisted “movies can change the world” but not by shaping policy.
The remarks sparked outrage online and prompted Indian author Arundhati Roy, who had been invited to present a restored copy of a 1989 film she wrote, to pull out of the festival, calling Wenders’s comments “jaw-dropping” and “unconscionable”.
Days later, dozens of film industry heavyweights including Javier Bardem, Tilda Swinton and Adam McKay signed an open letter condemning the festival’s “silence” on Gaza and accusing it of censoring opponents of Israel’s “ongoing genocide”.
Stars including Michelle Yeoh, Ethan Hawke, Neil Patrick Harris and Channing Tatum largely sidestepped pointed questions about Gaza and rising “fascism” in western countries at news conferences about their new films.
But other film-makers, including several of Saturday’s prize winners, used the festival’s platform to criticise Israel and the far right, garnering loud applause.
Wenders addressed the controversy during the ceremony, calling the dispute a social-media-driven “artificial discrepancy” between art and activism. He quoted Swinton as saying at the festival last year that “being for something does not ever imply being anti-anyone else”.
“Activists are fighting mainly on the internet for humanitarian causes, namely the dignity and protection of human life,” Wenders said. “These are our causes as well, as the Berlinale films clearly show.”
The US-born Berlinale chief Tricia Tuttle, who previously ran the London film festival, had earlier strongly rejected the allegations of censorship, calling them “incredibly damaging” and based on targeted “misinformation”.
At the awards ceremony, she expressed understanding for people who “arrived carrying a lot of grief and anger and some urgency about the world”.
“And if this Berlinale has been emotionally charged, that’s not a failure of the Berlinale, and it’s not a failure of cinema,” she said. “That is the Berlinale doing its job, and it’s cinema doing its job.”
