Mati Diop's Dahomey wins the Golden Bear for Best Film at the 74th edition of the Berlinale. The international jury, chaired by Lupita Nyong'o and consisting of Brady Corbet, Ann Hui, Christian Petzold, Albert Serra, Jasmine Trinca and Oksana Zabuzhko, has chosen the French director of Senegalese origin, who dedicated her documentary film to the return of Benin 26 objects, which were stolen from the Kingdom of Dahomey during the Colonial War and kept in the Musée du quai Branly in Paris.
Berlinale 2024, all winners
Hong San-soo misses out on the Golden Bear again and wins the fourth Silver Bear of his career. Jury Prize for L'empire by Bruno Dumont. Sebastian Stan, known as the Winter Soldier of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, wins his first festival award: he receives the Silver Bear for best leading role for “A Different Man,” in which he plays an aspiring actor who suffers from a facial deformity . Emily Watson will receive the award for best supporting actress in the festival's opening film, Small Things Like These, in which she plays a nun caught up in the Magdalene House case. For the two Italian competition films Antoher End and Gloria! there is nothing to do.
Among documentaries, No Other Land wins, centered on a Palestinian activist, led by an Israeli-Palestinian collective of four young activists and launched as “an act of creative resistance in the hope of greater justice.” In the Encounters section, dedicated to the most groundbreaking works, stands out Direct Action, a fluid documentary that tells the story of a rural collective of 150 people who successfully resisted the international airport expansion project in 2018 planned from 2021 has brought a new ecological movement to life.