The Berlin Film Festival starts the festival season and is, together with Cannes and Venice, the highlights of the year in the European film industry.
And the day after the big French César gala, it became French in Berlin too.
The documentary "Sur l'Adamant" won the Golden Bear.
- That a documentary can be seen as a biofilm in its own right really moves me, said director Nicolas Philibert.
Two veterans
The film is about a day center on a barge on the Seine, where adults with mental illness can seek help.
- As we all know, the craziest people are not the ones we think, continued Philibert.
The 72-year-old Frenchman is best known for another documentary, "To be and have - a hymn to life", about a school in the French countryside.
It won several awards and was shown in Swedish cinemas in 2003.
The jury's grand prize went to German Christian Petzold's "Roter Himmel".
Petzold is also a veteran in the price context.
In 2012, he won the director's prize in Berlin for the GDR drama "Barbara".
Gender roles in focus
The acting awards in Berlin are gender neutral, and this year went to two performances that both deal with gender roles.
The Silver Bear for Best Actress went to the Spanish girl Sofía Otero, who in the film "20,000 Species of Bees" plays an eight-year-old girl who struggles with the fact that she was born a boy.
Best supporting actress went to German Thea Ehre for her performance in the film "Till the end of the night", about a transsexual woman who ends up in a police investigation.
- The performance amazed us all, it is a gift to all of us, said the president of the jury, the actor Kristin Stewart, when she presented the award.
The Swedish short film "And the king said, what a fantastic machine" by Axel Danielson and Maximilien Van Aertryck was also awarded, for best short film in the Generation 14plus section.
Earlier this week, Sanna Lenken's drama comedy "Comedy Queen" received the European children's film organization ECFA's feature film award.