Iran drama wins top award at Berlin film festival

BERLIN: Iranian drama “Nader and Simin: A Separation” won the Golden Bear for best picture at the Berlin film festival on Saturday, and its ensemble cast also picked up the best actor and actress prizes on a triumphant night.Director Asghar Farhadi’s portrayal of a marriage in crisis explores Iran’s class divisions, religious conservatism and its judicial system while at the same time maintaining the tension of a crime thriller.It had been heavily fancied to claim the top prize.The runner-up film prize, which comes with a Silver Bear, went to Hungarian director Bela Tarr’s black-and-white “The Turin Horse”, a slow-moving, bleak film about a farmer and his daughter’s forsaken lives in an isolated house.Ulrich Koehler picked up the best director award for “Sleeping Sickness”, about a Western family carrying out humanitarian work in Africa.And the best script went to Joshua Marston and Andamion Murataj for “The Forgiveness of Blood”, which examines the ancient tradition of blood feuds which are still enforced in some parts of Albania today – Khaleejnews