Friday night at the Berlinale, the Teddy Award for best lgbt feature went to Lisa Cholodenko and for best lgbt short it went to James Franco.
Cholodenko's The Kids Are Alright stars Annette Bening and Julianne Moore as longtime lesbian partners whose children search of their sperm donor father and come back with Mark Rufalo who has an affair with one of the moms. The comedy beat runners up Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's Howl starring James Franco as Allen Ginsberg, and Mine vaganti (Loose Cannons) by Ferzan Ozpetek. The eight person jury praised Cholodenko's film "for being a well-crafted and humorous take on the issues facing contemporary lesbian parents and the complexity of sexuality, relationships and family bonding."
Yes, that James Franco wrote and directed a five minute short called The Feast of Stephen, based on Anthony Hecht's poem. It took the Teddy Award over fellow finalists Covered by John Greyson and Franswa Sharl by Hannah Hilliard. According to the jurists, Franco's film is "a fearless cinematic adaptation of a poem exploring one of the darker sides of adolescent passion and sexual fantasy." Read this recap from Movieline if you doubt the short's gay bona fides.
Pietro Marcello's [left] La bocca del lupo (The Mouth of the Wolf) [above] won best documentary for "its poetic construction of a geographical and personal space and for
pushing the boundaries of conventional documentary filmmaking. It is a
beautiful meditation of love passing through time." Another finalist was I Shot My Love by Tomer Heymann.
The third documentary finalist, Michael Stock's Postcard to Daddy won the Siegessaeule readers award. The festival statement said, "Of all the films which the jury has seen this year Postcard to Daddy was by far the most moving. The members of the jury were so touched by Michael Stocks haunting documentary about his sexual abuse and the consequences for his life and that of his family that they still sat in silence in their seats minutes after the credits rolled. Through unsparing frankness that never became exhibitonist the filmmaker grants an intimate view of his suffering during and after the abuse. His cinematic self-discovery not only integrates his own story as a victim, but his entire family and even the perpetrator, and thus shows more clearly that sexual abuse is a universal issue. Stock does not mince what happened. No metaphors are used, the supposedly unspeakable is spoken out. The jury felt that Postcard to Daddy is a sad yet always hopeful film finally breaking the silence and the taboos which shows a way out of victimhood into a new life."
Jake Yuzna won the Jury Award for Open, "to give recognition to a brave feature debut exploring the wide spectrum of transgender love and relationships."
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