Italian documentary “Caesar Must Die,” showing inmates of a high-security prison staging Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” was awarded the Berlin film festival’s top award Saturday.
Directors Paolo Taviani and Vittorio Taviani received the Golden Bear award out of 18 contenders at what is the first of the year’s major European film festivals.
The Taviani brothers, both in their early 80s, thanked the international jury led by British director Mike Leigh and sent their greetings to the inmates of Rome’s Rebibbia prison, including former mafia leaders, who starred in the film.
“I hope that someone, going home, after seeing ‘Caesar Must Die’ will think that even an inmate, on whose head is a terrible punishment, is, and remains, a man. And this thanks to the sublime words of Shakespeare,” Vittorio Taviani said.
The two filmmakers spent six months following the rehearsals for the play. The documentary does not dwell on the crimes the inmates have committed, but shows the actors immerse themselves in the play’s web of friendship and betrayal, power, dishonesty and violence. But after the premiere, the cell doors slam shut behind Caesar, Brutus and the others, leaving them to return to their lives behind bars.
“We chose ‘Julius Caesar’ for one clear reason. We were working in a prison, that meant it was easy to get the message across with this play where actors are talking about freedom, about tyranny, about assasinations, and murder,” Paolo Taviani said through a translator.
The festival’s runner-up Silver Bear went to Hungarian director Bence Fliegauf for “Just the Wind,” which focuses on the lives of a family of Roma as their community faces a series of deadly attacks.
The film features an amateur Roma, or Gypsies, cast and depicts the long-suffering, grimly silent mother Mari (Katalin Toldi), her elderly invalid father and two children who struggle to make ends meet and dream of emigrating one day to Canada — against the quietly menacing backdrop of a series of killings in their out-of-the-way neighborhood.
The film takes its cue from true-life murders that happened in 2008-9, though Fliegauf has stressed that it does not document those killings.
Roma, who make up an estimated 5-8 percent of Hungary’s 10 million people, battle deep prejudice and have been deeply affected by the loss of guaranteed jobs after the end of communism more than 20 years ago.
The Silver Bear for best actor went to Mikkel Boe Folsgaard for his role in “Royal Affair,” and the award for the best actress went to Rachel Mwanza, 14, for her role as a Congolese child soldier in “War Witch.”
The Silver Bear for the best director went to German filmmaker Christian Petzold for “Barbara,” which depicts the life of a young physician in the 1980s who wants to escape from then communist East Germany to join her lover in West Germany.
The festival’s eight-member jury also included actor Jake Gyllenhaal and Asghar Farhadi, the Iranian director of last year’s Golden Bear-winning film, “A Separation.”
Farhadi’s film won best foreign language film honors at the Golden Globes last month and is competing for the same award at this year’s Oscars.
Outside the main competition, about 400 films were screened, and the Berlinale festival’s highlights included Meryl Streep being honored for her lifetime achievement and Angelina Jolie’s directorial debut, the Bosnian war movie “In the Land of Blood and Honey.”
Apple and Google Face UK Investigation Into Mobile Browser Dominance
Apple and Google aren't giving consumers a genuine choice of mobile web browsers, a British watchdog said Friday in a report that recommends they face an investigation under new U.K. digital rules taking effect next year.
The Competition and Markets Authority took aim at Apple, saying the iPhone maker's tactics hold back innovation by stopping rivals from giving users new features like faster webpage loading. Apple does this by restricting progressive web apps, which don't need to be downloaded from an app store and aren't subject to app store commissions, the report said.
"This technology is not able to fully take off on iOS devices," the watchdog said in a provisional report on its investigation into mobile browsers that it opened after an initial study concluded that Apple and Google effectively have a chokehold on "mobile ecosystems."
The CMA's report also found that Apple and Google manipulate the choices given to mobile phone users to make their own browsers "the clearest or easiest option."
And it said that the a revenue-sharing deal between the two U.S. Big Tech companies "significantly reduces their financial incentives" to compete in mobile browsers on Apple's iOS operating system for iPhones.
Both companies said they will "engage constructively" with the CMA.
Apple said it disagreed with the findings and said it was concerned that the recommendations would undermine user privacy and security.
Google said the openness of its Android mobile operating system "has helped to expand choice, reduce prices and democratize access to smartphones and apps" and that it's "committed to open platforms that empower consumers."
It's the latest move by regulators on both sides of the Atlantic to crack down on the... Read More