Berlin (AFP)

A sharp and crazy Golden Bear that falls right in the middle of Covid: the Romanian Radu Jude was crowned Friday in Berlin for "Bad Luck Banging and Looney Porn", a charge, shot with a mask, against social hypocrisy.

This 43-year-old filmmaker succeeds the Iranian Mohammad Rasoulof, who was part with five other former laureates of the jury of this exceptional edition, reduced and online due to the pandemic.

The film, abundant and raw, whose title could be translated as "Unfortunate fuck and crazy porn", opens with a sequence of several minutes of amateur porn.

The escape of this "sextape", shot with her companion by Emi (Katia Pascariu), who teaches history in a Romanian high school, is the opportunity for Radu Jude to paint a vitriolic portrait of contemporary society, from the military to the religious through the nouveau riche and paragons of virtue.

This filmmaker, one of the most prominent of the rich cinematographic scene of Eastern Europe, had already won in 2015 the Silver Bear for best director in Berlin for Aferim !, on the racism suffered by Roma in Romania. .

"It is a film as well elaborated as wild, intelligent and childish, geometric and vibrant, imprecise and which attacks the spectator: it leaves no one indifferent" while shaking "our social and cinematographic conventions", greeted one of the members of the jury, Israeli director Nadav Lapid.

"Viewers are invited to make a comparison between the obscenity of this porn video and the public obscenity of society, hypocrisy, traces of history that remain until us," explained during the competition at AFP Radu Jude.

"There is a comedy of despair, of sexuality, of the human condition", "but that does not of course prevent being furious or angry with certain aspects of our society," he continued.

The film also has the distinction of having been shot in the midst of a pandemic and all the actors appear masked.

A constraint put to good use by the director, who enjoys making his actors wear masks adorned with slogans or smileys that are totally out of step with their words.

“I collected all the masks I found and chose them for the actors, like a costume,” Radu Jude said.

- "Non-gender" award to an actress -

Great novelty of the year, the "non-gender" prize for interpretation, which replaces the traditional "Silver Bear" for best actor and best actress, out of a clear concern for equality, went to an actress , the German Maren Eggert, for her role as a researcher falling in love with a humanoid robot in the comedy "I'm your Man".

Also on the list are the Japanese Ryusuke Hamaguchi ("Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy", grand jury prize), the Hungarian Dénes Nagy ("Natural Light", best director) or the South Korean Hong Sangsoo ("Introduction", best screenplay ).

The French Xavier Beauvois ("Albatros") and Céline Sciamma ("Petite Maman") leave empty-handed.

The Berlin festival, one of the most important in Europe, had chosen to maintain itself despite health constraints, opting for an online edition, five days instead of eleven.

Organizers hope they can make up for it with screenings open to the public in June.

A choice that the next big festival on the calendar has always firmly refused, and the most prestigious, that of Cannes, for whom such an event without meetings on the Croisette and without communion in a dark room does not make sense.

Forced to cancel last year, its organizers announced that the 2021 edition would take place from July 6 to 17, instead of May.

But in France, cinemas are still closed and gatherings still prohibited, no one risking a bet on a date for the resumption of cultural activities.

© 2021 AFP