19/02/2005 - South African U-Carmen eKhayelitsha by Marc Dornford-May won the Golden Bear. Marc Rothemund was awarded the Silver Bear for the Best direction for his film Sophie Scholl – Her Last Days

Roland Emmerich, president of the jury in Berlin this year, has just revealed the winners for 2005. Some films were particularly popular amongst the public, especially Jacques Audiard’s The Beat my Heart Skipped [+see also:
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Yet, as far as the former was concerned at least, it won one prize only, the Silver Bear for the Best music (Alexandre Desplat). The latter was as successful as expected : Marc Rothemund won the Silver Bear for the Best direction and his actress Julia Jentsh received the Silver Bear as Best Actress in a leading role. Sophie Scholl – Her Last Days which recounts the moral battle of wits between the young resistant and a nazi inquisitor, also got an esteem prize.

The Jury’s Choice Prize went to Peacock (China) by Gu Changwei. Africa was a recurrent topic this year in the competition through Hotel Rwanda [+see also:
film review
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interview: Don Cheadle
interview: Terry George
film profile] and Sometimes in April ; eventually the Golden Bear went, to everybody’s surprise, to the South-African adaptation of the opera Carmen, U-Carmen eKhayelitsha, by Marc Dornford-May. Lou Taylor Pucci (USA) was granted the Silver Bear for the Best Actor for Thumbsucker by Mike Mills. Tsai Ming Liang, after receiving yesterday, for the fifth time, the Fipresci Prize, learnt today that she was also the winner of the Silver Bear for the Best Artistic work with The Wayward Cloud (Taiwan, China, France), a film also distinguished by the Alfred Bauer Prize. The Blue Angel Award for the Best European film went to Paradise Now [+see also:
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film profile] by Hany Abu-Assad, a coproduction between the Netherlands, Germany, and France. This film also got the Amnesty International Prize. It was shot in Palestine and shows two friends and suicide bombers who lose each other during their mission and are left alone with their convictions.

Germany is not far from last year great performance (the German film Head On [+see also:
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This year, European coproductions confirmed the high degree of quality which characterises them, as well as their popularity amongst professionals and critics, not to forget the public. Thus, Live and become [+see also:
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interview: Denis Carot
interview: Didar Domehri
interview: Radu Mihaileanu
film profile] by Radu Mihaieanu, which Film Distribution has been very busy selling lately, got a distinction in the Panorama section, as well as a prize from the public and the Label Europa Cinema (won ex-aequo with the French film Crustaces et coquillages by Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau) The France/Belgium coproduction Ultranova [+see also:
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interview: Bouli Lanners
film profile] by Bouli Lanners, which has raised much interest in Berlin, won the C.I.C.A.E Prize (from the Confédération Internationale des Cinémas d’Art et d’Essai).

(Translated from French)