This year’s Berlin International Film Festival has been one for the books so far. On opening night, Tilda Swinton was recognized with the Honorary Golden Bear Award for her lifetime achievement, followed by a week of outstanding programming that included world premieres from Richard Linklater, Bong Joon Ho, and Rebecca Lenkiewicz. As the festival culminates in its award and closing ceremonies this weekend, we’re taking a look back at some of the Golden and Silver Bear winners of years past.
If you’re new to the fest, the Golden Bear award is the festival’s highest prize, awarded by the jury to the best film in that year's competition lineup, while the Silver Bear is awarded for various categories, including Best Director, Best Leading Performance, Best Screenplay, and Jury Grand Prix.
Regardless of their Golden or Silver status, each and every one of these films reflects the boundary-pushing, thought-provoking, and politically and socially significant storytelling that the Berlinale is known for – and you can watch them all on Kino Film Collection.
Golden Bear Winners:
Jafar Panahi's Taxi (2015)
Internationally acclaimed director Jafar Panahi (This is Not a Film) drives a yellow cab through the vibrant streets of Tehran, picking up a diverse (and yet representative) group of passengers in a single day. Each man, woman, and child candidly expresses his or her own view of the world, while being interviewed by the curious and gracious driver/director. His camera, placed on the dashboard of his mobile film studio, captures a spirited slice of Iranian society while also brilliantly redefining the borders of comedy, drama, and cinema.
Fire at Sea (2016)
Fire at Sea takes place in Lampedusa, a Mediterranean island and major entry point for refugees into Europe. Award-winning filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi masterfully juxtaposes these realities, providing a new understanding of the migrant crisis and the price of freedom. In addition to winning the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, Fire at Sea is also an Academy Award® nominee for Best Documentary Feature.
Synonyms (2019)
Nadav Lapid's Synonyms follows a disaffected young Israeli named Yoav, who flees Tel Aviv for Paris to start a new life. As he throws himself into learning French and molding a new identity, his attempts to find himself awaken past demons and open up an existential abyss. Based on the director's own experiences, this tragicomic puzzle explores the challenges of putting down roots in a new place. Taking a page out of Yoav’s pocket dictionary, the film could be described in a few synonyms: bold, fearless, and completely unmissable.
There Is No Evil (2021)
Shot in secret and smuggled out of Iran, this anthology film by Mohammad Rasoulof comprises four moral tales about men faced with an unthinkable choice—to follow orders to enforce the death penalty, or resist and risk everything. Whatever they decide, it will directly or indirectly affect their lives, their relationships, and their consciences. Suspenseful, mysterious, and shot through with a sense of urgency, Rasoulof’s film is an incisive look at the moral strength and inner humanity of its protagonists.
.jpg)
On the Adamant (2023)
From nonfiction master Nicolas Philibert, this affecting, enlightening documentary invites viewers to come aboard the Adamant and witness the transformational power of art and community. The Adamant is a one-of-a-kind place: a floating refuge on the Seine River in the heart of Paris that offers day programs for adults with mental illnesses. Its attendees come from across the city and are offered care that grounds them in time and space, helping them achieve recovery and stability. Through a blend of therapy, education, and culture rooted in music and the arts, the Adamant offers a hopeful vision of what a humanistic approach to mental health care could look like.
Silver Bear Winners:
The Boat Is Full (1981)
Winner of the Silver Bear for Outstanding Single Achievement
Nominated for an Academy Award® for Best Foreign Language Film, The Boat is Full is a tense and heartbreaking drama that captures the plight of refugees during WWII. A ragtag band of five Jewish exiles and a deserting Nazi soldier escape from a German train and sneak into Switzerland where they seek asylum at a farmhouse inn. They pose as a family to avoid suspicion, but how long can they evade the authorities? Pointedly relevant and nail-bitingly tense, The Boat is Full exposes Switzerland’s complicity in WWII despite its reputation for being “neutral.”
The Pearl Button (2014)
Winner of the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay
With its 2,670 miles of coastline, Chile is the largest archipelago in the world. In it are volcanoes, mountains, glaciers, and the Patagonian indigenous people. Some say that water has memory. This film shows that it also has a voice. Patricio Guzmán’s The Pearl Button explores the history of Chile through its otherworldly landscape, from the resilience of the indigenous tribes to the cruel reign of Augusto Pinochet and the timeless connection between the water and the cosmos.
Sister (2012)
Winner of the Silver Bear Special Award
Ursula Meier’s Sister follows 12-year-old Simon (Kacey Mottet Klein) who lives with his older sister Louise (Léa Seydoux) in a housing complex below a luxury Swiss ski resort. As Louise drifts in and out of jobs and relationships, Simon takes on the responsibility of providing for the two of them with small-time hustles. But when Simon partners with a crooked British seasonal worker, he begins to lose his boundaries, affecting his relationship with his sister and plummeting him into dangerous territory.
Confidence (1980)
Winner of the Silver Bear for Best Director
Set in WWII-era Hungary in the final days of Nazi occupation, István Szabó's Confidence follows two unrelated members of the resistance who must act as husband and wife in an effort to stay hidden in plain sight. Soon their mutual attraction grows into a passionate affair, but even in love can they have trust? In addition to winning the Silver Bear for Best Director at the 1980 Berlinale, Confidence was nominated for an Academy Award® for Best Foreign Language Film.
Museo (2018)
Winner of the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay
Museo stars Gael García Bernal and Leonardo Ortizgris as two 30-something friends floundering in life and still living with their parents. On a fateful Christmas Eve, however, they decide it’s finally time to distinguish themselves by executing the most infamous cultural artifacts heist in all of Mexican history, looting the country's iconic National Anthropology Museum. Inspired by true events, and shot at never-before-filmed locations in Mexico, Museo is a sardonic cautionary tale that underscores the old adage: you don’t know what you have until you lose it.
Victoria (2015)
Winner of the Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution for Cinematography
Shot in a single, uninterrupted take, Victoria follows a young woman from Madrid living in Berlin who meets local Sonne outside a nightclub. Sonne and his friends promise to show her a good time and the real side of the city, but unbeknownst to her, they’re preparing to repay a dangerous debt. As Victoria and Sonne’s bond develops, she gets wrapped up in their mission and what started out as a good time quickly spirals out of control into violence. The film’s single take and heart-pounding roller coaster ride will make viewers feel a part of the journey, like they, too, just had the craziest night of their lives.
Tabu (2012)
Winner of the Silver Bear
From acclaimed director Miguel Gomes comes a sumptuous, eccentric two-part story centered on Aurora, a woman who upon her deathbed requests to see a mysterious man no one has ever heard her speak about. The quest to find this man transports us to 1960s Africa, where we meet a young Aurora as the wife of a wealthy farmer involved in a forbidden love affair with the mysterious man. Shot in black and white and featuring a soundtrack of Phil Spector songs, Tabu is a lush and poetic tale of love, mystery, and colonialism.
Ixcanul (2015)
Winner of the Silver Bear
Named after the volcano at the center of the story, Ixcanul is a hypnotic and visually breathtaking tale about a young woman’s desire for freedom while confined by tradition, circumstance, and even nature. Dreaming of a life beyond her village, Maria tries to take control of her own fate for the first time, only to fall prey to the many dangers around her. The brilliant debut by Guatemalan filmmaker Jayro Bustamante is a mesmerizing fusion of fact and fable, a dreamlike depiction of the daily lives of Kaqchikel speaking Mayans, chronicling a disappearing tradition and a disappearing people.
Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (2005)
Winner of the Silver Bear for Best Director and Best Actress
2005 Academy Award® Nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, Sophie Scholl: The Final Days is the true story of Germany’s most famous anti-Nazi heroine and the fearles activist of the underground student resistance group, The White Rose. Armed with long-buried historical records of her incarceration, director Marc Rothemund expertly re-creates the last six days of Sophie Scholl’s life: a heart-stopping journey from arrest to interrogation, trial, and sentence in 1943 Munich. Under cross-examination by the Gestapo, Scholl delivers a passionate call to freedom and personal responsibility that is both haunting and timeless.
Barbara (2012)
Winner of the Silver Bear for Best Director
Set in 1980 East Germany, Barbara follows a young doctor who has applied for an exit visa from the GDR and, as punishment, has been transferred from her prestigious post in Berlin to a small pediatric hospital in the country. Despite the Stasi watching her every move, Barbara secretly plans an escape to the West with the help of a lover. But as she grows more attached to her patients, and a doctor in whom she sees a kindred spirit, she must weigh her dream of living in the West against what she’ll be leaving behind in the East.