Honey a heart-warming drama from Turkish director Semih Kaplanoglu, has won the Golden Bear for best film at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival. The still-incarcerated Roman Polanski won the Best Director Silver Bear for "The Ghost Writer." "Honey," the final film in Kaplanoglu's autobiographical trilogy - the others are "Egg" (2007) and "Milk" (2008) - follows a young boy in rural Turkey whose father collects wild honey.
Semih Kaplanoglu’s Turkish drama Honey, the final installment of an autobiographical trilogy that began with Egg (2007) and Milk (2008), was the unexpected winner of the 2010 Berlin Film Festival’s Golden Bear.
Honey, in fact, turned out to be the first Turkish film to ever win the Golden Bear. Set in a mountainous forest, Honey tells the story of a six-year-old boy (Bora Altas) who ventures into the woods after his wild honey-collecting father has gone missing. "The central performance is touching, truthful and overpoweringly charming," wrote Nigel Andrews of the Financial Times. "One of those classic screen turns by a child, up there with The Kid and The Red Balloon."
The Berlin 2010 jury was composed of German filmmaker Werner Herzog, the jury president; Chinese actress Yu Nan; Italian writer-director Francesca Comencini; Spanish producer Jose Maria Morales; Somali-born writer Nuruddin Farah; American Oscar-winning actress Renee Zellweger; and German actress Cornelia Froboess.
It was one of the few life-affirming films in this year's Berlinale line-up and was an underdog favorite for the top prize. The Berlinale Jury, headed by director Werner Herzog, gave its Silver Bear Jury Prize to a very different film: Florin Serban's pull-no-punches look at juvenile delinquents in Romania, "If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle." "Whistle" also nabbed the Alfred Bauer award, named after the Berlinale's founder.
But the most controversial award is Berlin's Best Director nod for Polanski, a decision that is certain to light up the talk show airwaves. Whatever the reasons for the jury's decision, the Silver Bear for Polanski will likely be seen as a signal of solidarity with the director, currently under house arrest in Switzerland and awaiting possible extradition to the United States on a sex charge dating back to the 1970s.
Polanski naturally wasn't able to attend the ceremony, but sent a message through one of his producers. "Even if I could come, I wouldn't," Polanski said. "Because the last time I went to a festival to accept an award, I ended up in jail." Grigory Dobrygin and Sergei Puskepalis shared Best Actor Silver Bears for their portrayal of two men struggling against nature in Alexei Popogrebsky's "How I Ended This Summer." The film's camera man, Pavel Kostomarov, picked up a second Silver Bear for extraordinary cultural contribution for his breathtaking Arctic images.
Japan's Shinobu Terajima won the Best Actress Silver Bear for Koji Wakamatsu's "Caterpillar," in which she plays a wife caring for her soldier husband, who has lost all his limbs in the second Sino-Japanese war. The Best Screenplay Silver Bear went to Wang Quan'an's family drama "Apart Together." "Sebbe," from Swedish director Babak Najafi, which ran in Berlin's Generation sidebar, was honored with the festival's Best First Film award.
Honey (Bal)
The film moves back to tell how he came to be there. Kaplanoglu and co-screenwriter Orcun Koksal contrive small and delicate scenes to evoke the strong emotional bond between father and son. They whisper to each other and the boy learns about time and place, the nature of birds, and the names, smells and taste of flowers. Mother (Tulin Ozen) is a benign but mostly silent presence and only comes to the fore when her husband is believed missing. In a touching scene, the boy who has shown that he hates milk, drinks a glass down unasked just to please her. The boy's struggle to read and please his teacher in class contrasts with his assurance in the woods and, while the fate of his father remains unknown, the film conveys powerfully that the boy will continue to know his way. Kaplanoglu draws a multi-faceted performance from the boy helped greatly by Besikcioglu's solid presence as the father while the gentle strength of the mother is well captured by Ozen, using small glances to great effect. Slow-paced and without music other than the calls and cries of the forest creatures, "Honey" suggests that while nature is not full of human kindness, humans may find salvation there.
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