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Simon herself grew up on a peach farm in the
village of Alcarras, and her film was made using amateur actors
from that area whom she recruited at village fairs and coached
into playing several generations of a family of smallholders.
Announcing the best film award, the festival's first since
returning to in-person screenings after last year's coronavirus-enforced
break, jury president M. Night Shyamalan praised her skill in
marshalling powerful performances from a cast that ranged from
child actors to people in their 80s.
"This is really amazing because it is a small story about
farmers and my family of farmers and a small village, and it's
so local so it feels so well that it will travel," Simon said
afterwards on the red carpet, celebrating the global attention
she hopes her film will receive thanks to the prize.
She described her film as a study of intergenerational tensions
and how they and other fissures can be deepened by the trauma of
seeing the death of a way of life once thought eternal.
During an emotional ceremony in which several winners dedicated
awards to friends who had died of COVID-19, the best documentary
award went to "Myanmar Diaries," a documentary shot by 10
anonymous filmmakers whose footage was smuggled out and stitched
into a portrait of life in Myanmar since last year's coup.
Amid tensions and shuttle diplomacy centering on Russia's
intentions toward Ukraine, some awards did reflect the
Berlinale's traditional role as a political festival, set up in
the 1950s in a divided city on the front lines of the Cold War.
The best short film was awarded to recent graduate Anastasia
Veber's "Trap", a 20-minute portrait of the lives of young
adults in Russia who party the nights away, chasing hedonism and
trying to evade police checks.
"Rabiye Kurnaz vs. George W. Bush," an account of Kurnaz's
struggle to get her son returned to Germany from the U.S. prison
camp in Guantanamo Bay, won awards for best screenplay and best
lead performance, which went to German-Turkish comedian Meltem
Kaptan for her portrayal of the mother who bends the world to
her will through the sheer power of love.
(Reporting by Thomas Escritt; Additional reporting by Hanna
Rantala and Swantje Stein; Editing by Mark Porter)
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