Refugees documentary in frame for Berlin film fest prizes
Play
BERLIN - "Fire at Sea", a harrowing documentary about Europe's refugee crisis, looked the favourite to clinch the Berlin film festival's Golden Bear top prize Saturday from a jury led by Meryl Streep.
Italian director Gianfranco Rosi's picture was ahead in critics' polls by British trade magazine Screen among 18 contenders at Europe's first major cinema showcase of the year.
Reviewers called it a strong festival, with other features in the frame including "24 Weeks," a powerful German drama about late-term abortion, and "Hedi," a moving Tunisian love story set against the aftermath of the Arab Spring.
Points for audacity and ambition went to Lav Diaz's eight-hour-plus historical epic on the 1896 Philippine revolution, "A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery," which drew cheers from an exhausted audience at its premiere.
"Fire at Sea" offers an unflinching look at life on the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa, where thousands of migrants have arrived trying to reach the European Union over the last two decades and thousands more have died trying.
Screen hailed it as a "powerful, at times shocking but also intensely human documentary" while the German daily Berliner Zeitung called the film "devastating" at a time when the humanitarian crisis is sowing deep divisions in Europe.
The other documentary in competition, Academy Award winner Alex Gibney's "Zero Days", was touted as exposing the secret scope of the US cyber warfare programme.
British newspaper the Guardian called it an "intriguing, disturbing watch".
Audiences also warmed to Yang Chao's "Crosscurrent," a poetic Chinese drama about the passage of time in a society in upheaval as symbolised by the flow of the Yangtze River.
"The power of images, the stream of consciousness in the storytelling, the enigmatic magic of its love story -- it all hits home," Berlin public broadcaster RBB said.
- AFP
