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Update, writethru: The 70th Berlin Film Festival, and the first under new leadership team Mariette Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian, drew to a close this evening with the Golden Bear awarded to Mohammad Rasoulof’s There Is No Evil. Rasoulof is currently banned from leaving Iran for participation in social and political activity. This is the second time in five years that Berlin’s top prize has gone to an Iranian filmmaker unable to travel outside their home country — the last time was in 2015 when Jafar Panahi scooped the honor for Taxi.

Along with Panahi and Asghar Farhadi, Rasoulof, whose credits also include Manuscripts Don’t Burn, is among the best-known Iranian filmmakers on the international stage. His last picture, A Man Of Integrity, won Cannes’ Un Certain Regard prize in 2017, but his passport was confiscated that same year. Yesterday, the director issued a statement of regret over his inability to...

Eliza Hittman’s ’Never Rarely Sometimes Always’ wins Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize.

Mohammad Rasoulof’s There Is No Evil has become the latest film from Iran to win the Berlinale’s top honour, the Golden Bear, following Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation in 2012 and Jafar Panahi’s Taxi Tehran in 2015.

Rasoulof was not able to attend this year’s festival because he is banned from leaving Iran following his arrest last year. The film’s producers Farzad Pak and Kaveh Farnam, and the director’s daughter Baran Rasoulof (an actress who lives in Hamburg) collected the award on his...

“Sheytan vojud nadarad” (“There Is No Evil”) has won the Golden Bear Award at the 2020 Berlin International Film Festival, the Berlin jury announced at a ceremony on Saturday.

The film by director Mohammad Rasoulof consists of four different stories about military men in Iran who are asked to perform executions. It won in a competition lineup that consisted of 18 movies and also included Kelly Reichardt’s “First Cow,” Sally Potter’s “‘The Roads Not Taken,” Philippe Garrel’s “The Salt of Tears,” Abel Ferrara’s “Siberia” and Christian Petzold’s “Undine.”

Eliza Hittman’s “Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” the story of two teenage girls traveling from Pennsylvania to New York City for an abortion, won the Grand Jury Prize, the festival’s second-place award.

Also Read: 'Never Rarely Sometimes Always' Director Explains Why Her Stars Auditioned in a Bathroom (Video)

Acting awards went to Elio Germano for “Volevo nascondermi” (“Hidden Away...

The 2020 Berlin Film Festival, which kicked off on February 20, handed out its top prizes today as the fest comes to a close in Germany. The night’s top winner, Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof for “There Is No Evil,” could not attend the ceremony due to an Iran-sanctioned travel ban and possible prison sentence for his politically charged film (read IndieWire’s review here). See all this year’s winners below.

As is befitting for a festival season marked by tension, activists were gathered outside the festivities in front of the Berlinale Palast, where the honors took place, demonstrating for climate change. The 70th edition of the Berlinale weathered its share of controversies this year, too, from jury president Jeremy Irons digging up past controversial remarks to the revelation that late festival chief Alfred Bauer had ties to the Nazi party. The first edition assembled by artistic director Carlo Chatrian and...

Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof’s “There Is No Evil,” a drama about the impact of capital punishment on society and the human condition, won the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival on Saturday.

The seven-person festival jury, headed by Jeremy Irons, spread the prizes far and wide, with no single filmmaker dominating the awards.

American writer-director Eliza Hittman won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize for “Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” a drama about teen pregnancy, while the Silver Bear for best director went to South Korea’s Hong Sang Soo for his Seoul-set drama “The Woman Who Ran.”

Rasoulof, who is unable to leave Iran due to a travel ban, faces a one-year prison sentence for “spreading propaganda.” The filmmaker released a statement on Friday expressing his sorrow at missing the premiere of “There Is No Evil”: “I am sorry that I will not be able...

Early in “Irradiated,” a powerful but troublesome documentary howl of despair from Cambodian director Rithy Panh, the narration describes an act that must be familiar to anyone similarly transfixed by history. Referring to the black and white archival war footage that marches in triplicate across a screen that’s divided into three panels, the narrator speaks of “searching the eyes of the soldiers… but finding nothing there.” Anyone who has ever stared long and hard at a photograph of a deceased loved one, or at a picture of conflict reportage must relate to the frustration: It’s as though somehow we believe that an image must have within it some clue to the understanding of the incomprehensible loss or tragedy it depicts, and we can be acutely disappointed to find no such enlightenment.

This urge informs and complicates “Irradiated,” a film that is broader, wider and more ambitious in scope...

“Evil will hunt us if we don’t throw it out from us with open palms,” a disembodied voice declares to us in French at the start of “Irradiated,” Rithy Panh’s mesmerizingly bleak montage of war in the 20th century. “At the top of the sky is pain. It always comes as a surprise.” And so the great onslaught begins as the bombs rain down from the heavens and the image cracks into three perfect squares that stretch across the screen in a narrow sliver of light; together they create an anamorphic slot machine of needless suffering.

More often than not, each column shows the same snippet of archival footage, as Nazi rallies bleed into the Khmer Rouge before napalm glazes the treetops of Vietnam. Sometimes, however, the square in the center is out of sync with the two on either side; shots of a bombed out church frame...

Only two titles can now top ‘Never Rarely Sometimes Always’.

Tsai Ming-liang’s Taiwanese title Days has performed strongly on Screen’s Berlin 2020 Competition jury grid, achieving a 3.3 average for second place with just two titles to go.

Days received three top scores of four (excellent), from Meduza’s Anton Dolin, The Morning Star’s Rita Di Santo and Screen’s own critic – the joint-most of any title this year with grid leader Never Rarely Sometimes Always.

It did not receive any negative marks, with only one two (average) from Dagens Nyheter’s Helena Lindblad.

The film centres on Kang and Non,...

‘Never Rarely Sometimes Always’ still leads.

Burhan Qurbani’s Berlin Alexanderplatz and Sally Potter’s The Roads Not Taken scored low on Screen’s Berlin 2020 Competition jury grid, as controversial Russian title Dau. Natasha split opinion for a joint-third place spot.

Qurbani’s adaptation of Alfred Döblin’s 1929 novel scored three ones (poor) from Segnocinema’s Paolo Bertolin, Meduza’s Anton Dolin, and The Morning Star’s Rita Di Santo, as well as three twos (average), with only one positive score of three (good) from Dagens Nyheter’s Helena Lindblad. This brought it an average of 1.7, the fourth-lowest score on the grid.

Playtime has closed raft of pre-sales to key territories on a pair of anticipated prestige films, Francois Ozon’s “Summer of 85” and Naomi Kawase’s “True Mothers,” after unveiling promo reels of both pics at the Efm in Berlin.

“Summer of 85” has pre-sold to Israel (Lev Cinema), Turkey (Bir Film), Poland (Against Gravity), Spain (Golem),

Belgium (September Film), Switzerland’s (Filmcoopi), Russia (A One), Portugal (Leopardo Filmes), Latin America (California Filmes), South Korea (Challan) and Ex-Yugoslavia (McF). Playtime is currently negotiating deals in other territories around the world.

A coming-of-age love story, “Summer 85” follows 16-year-old Alexis who meets 18-year-old David on the coast of Normandy and feels that he has just met the friend of his dreams.

On top of being directed by Ozon, one of France’s leading auteurs whose last film, “By the Grace of God,” won the Silver Bear in Berlin, the project is a...

Ahead of its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival, Stephen Maxwell Johnson’s “High Ground” has found a U.S. home with Samuel Goldwyn. The film, headlined by Simon Baker, is represented in international markets by pan-European group Playtime and is having a gala screening at the festival.

Set in 1919, “High Ground” tells the story of former WWI sniper Travis, who is now a policeman in the vast and remote landscape of Northern Australia. He loses control of an operation, resulting in the massacre of an indigenous tribe.

While his superiors decide to bury the truth, the experience leaves a scar on Travis’ conscience, but he’s forced to return there 12 years later on a mission to track down an Aboriginal outlaw. Travis soon realizes the young man he’s chasing is the only known survivor of the massacre.

“High Ground” shot on location in the world heritage-listed Kakadu...