Berlinale 2014 winners: Best Film to Bai Ri Yan Huo

Diao Yinan's noirish thriller takes the Golden Bear for Best Film

The Berlinale, known as the European art-house film festival, looked eastward this year, awarding its top prize, the Golden Bear, to Bai Ri Yan Huo (Black Coal, Thin Ice) by Chinese director Diao Yinan.

Black Coal, Thin Ice’s use of film noir conventions and aesthetics is unusual for a Chinese film, but the novelty of the style quickly wore off, revealing fairly meagre substance. The Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize went to Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel , allegedly his best work since The Royal Tenenbaums. It’s a lovable film, but hardly pushed the boundaries of cinema. The Silver Bear Alfred Bauer prize was awarded to grandmaster Alain Resnais for Aimer, boire et chanter (The Life of Riley) – a highly theatrical adaptation of an Alan Ayckbourn play about four ageing thespians in the Yorkshire countryside. 

Two awards stood out for this reviewer as marking truly astounding accomplishments. Richard Linklater won the Best Director prize for Boyhood  – a three-hour coming-of-age study shot over thirteen years which is a work of patience and understatement and a sheer joy to experience.

The prize for Best Script went to Dietrich Bruggerman’s third feature Kreuzweg (Stations of the Cross), a tragicomedy about religious fanaticism. Due to be released in the UK in July,  the film is likely to get international distribution, but its commercial prospects are slim. 

While the shortlisted contenders were met with a degree of critical scepticism this year, there were gems among the out-of-competition films. Saar Klein, editor of The Bourne Identity and Oliver Stone’s JFK , debuted as a director with his first film Things People Do – one of the better recession-era tragedies, while screenwriter Martin McDonagh’s brother, John Michael McDonagh, premiered his second feature, Calvary,  a black comedy piece about the tribulations of a  priest in an Irish village. The festival’s more experimental Forum section showcased arthouse master T sai Ming-Liang’s latest work, Journey to the West , and French-Canadian indie king Denis Côté’s visual essay Joy of Man’s Desiring . 

With a reputation as one of the world's best film festivals, it's certainly a useful source of recommendations for new film releases that are well worth a watch.