Also available in: Italian

At the Berlin Film Festival the Iranian film Taxi wins the Golden Bear.

The Golden Bear went to Taxi by Jafar Panahi, the Iranian director sentenced by the Tehran regime not to leave the country, not to give interviews nor make films. Panahi, who in 2000 won the Venice Film Festival with The Circle, has made this film in secret, placing the camera on the dashboard of his cab and putting himself as the head actor in the streets of Tehran. It is a film of denunciation of the Iranian situation through the stories of the many customers who take the taxi, but at the same time is a film full of poetry and humor.

Awarded the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize, the film El Chilean from director Pablo Larrain’s club, is a tale of denunciation of pedophilia of some priests that the church keeps hidden in a house by the sea.

Charlotte Rampling and Tom Cournenay received the prize of best performances in the film 45 years of from Englishman Andrew Haigh, which tells of an elderly couple on their 45th anniversary who learn that the body of a former girlfriend of man was found and this news undermines their, until then, perfect union.

No prizes instead went to the film Italian Sworn Virgin, with debutant director Laura Bispuri, and Alba Rohrwachter in the shoes of the protagonist. Filmed between Albania and Bolzano, it tells of a tribal practice, the Kanun, a law that allows an Albanian girl to have the same rights as men if she vows to remain a virgin.

Overall, this 65th Berlinale presented high quality films, from some uncomfortable topics, extreme situations, but also with a single concession to the mainstream, the presentation of 50 Shades of Grey.