What film festival awards the Golden Bear?
What film festival awards the Golden Bear?
The Golden Bear award is given at the Berlin Film Festival. The Berlin Film Festival, also known as Berlinale, takes its name from the Berlinale Palace. The bear symbol, which is the symbol of the city of Berlin, is also the symbol of the awards given at this festival. The Golden Bear and Silver Bear awards are given at the festival. The festival becomes the focal point in Berlin. The streets of Berlin, which are decorated less ostentatiously than other European cities even during Christmas, become filled with people revolving around the festival during Berlinale. Newspapers distribute free Berlinale supplements. The media gives the festival great coverage. The Berlin Film Festival, one of Europe's most important film festivals along with the Cannes and Venice film festivals, is more accessible than others. The high number of tickets available for public sale shows that it is more successful in reaching the average viewer than other festivals. At the same time, it would not be wrong to say that the awards are influenced by events that could create social crises. We can understand this from the fact that in 2016, the festival's most prestigious award, the Golden Bear, was given to the Italian documentary film director Gianfranco Rosi's film "Fuocoammare". The film's subject was the refugee crisis on the island of Lampedusa, and it played a role in drawing attention to and remembering the refugees who drowned in the Mediterranean while trying to migrate to Europe for years. In the same year, the Silver Bear award went to Lav Diaz's film "Hele Sa Hiwagang Hapis", which drew attention with its 8-hour length. "Hele Sa Hiwagang Hapis", the longest film in the festival's history, talks about Spanish colonialism in the Philippines at the end of the 19th century. In the same year, Mete Gümürhan was awarded a special mention in the youth and children's films section with his film "Genç Pehlivanlar". Aslı Özge's German-language film "Auf Einmal" also won the European Arthouse Cinema Award special mention at the festival. Another interesting screening that year was the Saudi Arabian film "Barakah Meets Barakah", directed by Mahmoud Sabbagh. This film received an invitation from the Berlin Film Festival to have its world premiere.
Golden Bear for Film Depicting Refugee Crisis
Semih Kaplanoğlu and the Golden Bear... In 2010, Semih Kaplanoğlu was awarded this prize with his film "Bal" (Honey), and the Turkish people were honored. One of the directors who received the Golden Bear award is the Turkish-German director Fatih Akın. Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay, a young director we don't hear much about, achieved great success and received the "best first film" award with his first feature film (Oray). One of the most notable films to receive the Golden Bear Award is Sidney Lumet's "12 Angry Men". The black-and-white film, adapted from a play, takes place among 12 men debating whether a young suspect is guilty or not. The efforts of the character played by Henry Fonda to convince the other jury members to find the truth are tremendous. The film "12 Angry Men" received the Golden Bear award in 1957. Bergman, Godard, Polanski, Pasolini... The following year, the Golden Bear Award was given to the film "Wild Strawberries" by the legendary director Bergman. Master directors such as Michelangelo Antonioni (1961-La Notte), Jean-Luc Godard (1965-Alphaville), Roman Polanski (1966-Cul-de-Sac), Pasolini (1972-I racconti di Canterbury), Costa-Gavras (1990 – Music Box), Jim Sheridan (1994 - In the Name of the Father), Asghar Farhadi (2011-A Separation) have also been awarded the Golden Bear.
