'Lenin' sweeps film awards
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Director Wolfgang Becker and actor Daniel Bruehl (R).
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BERLIN, Germany (Reuters) -- A heart-warming German box office blockbuster, "Good Bye, Lenin!," has dominated the European Film Awards, taking six top prizes at the 16th annual competition.
The bittersweet German comedy -- about a son who conceals the fall of the Berlin Wall from his ailing mother because he fears the shock might kill her -- took best film, best actor, and best screenwriter on Saturday.
The film by Wolfgang Becker also won three "People's Choice" awards for best directing, best actress and best actor in the contest sometimes referred to as the "European Oscars."
"Dogville," by Danish director Lars von Trier and starring Nicole Kidman, won best director and best cinematography.
German actor Daniel Bruehl won the European Film Academy statuette for best actor for "Good Bye, Lenin!" and Britain's Charlotte Rampling won best actress for her performance in "Swimming Pool."
"Good Bye, Lenin!" also took the EFA prize for best screenwriting, won by Bernd Lichtenberg.
In the "People's Choice" category, in which cinema-goers throughout Europe voted via the Internet and ballots at cinemas, Bruehl won another award for best actor while his co-star Katrin Sass won best actress and "Good Bye, Lenin!" director Becker won the public's prize for best director.
"The film may be local to Berlin but its message and the emotions can be understood around the world -- a son's love for his mother," Becker said at a news conference. "It's more than just a story about German unification."
Success in an 'ugly language'
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French director Claude Chabrol was given a Lifetime Achievement Award.
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The film's producer Stefan Arndt said "Good Bye, Lenin!" proved a good story can succeed even in his staccato language.
"It's just incredible that more than 300 million people in Europe have picked a German film in the German language, this ugly German language," Arndt said half in jest.
"Good Bye, Lenin!" topped Germany's box office this year with nearly $40 million, with nearly seven million tickets sold, and has risen high in cinema charts in Britain and France. Distribution rights have been sold in 68 countries.
"I got tears in my eyes tonight," said Becker, whose film also won eight German Film Prize awards in June.
The European Film Academy has 1,600 members from European film boards, subsidy agencies and industry professionals.
The awards are presented in Berlin every second year and in other European cities in the alternate years. Next year the ceremony will be held in Barcelona.
"European films are so much better than their reputation in theatres around the world," said Wim Wenders, president of the European Film Academy and a German director. Some 360 films from 47 countries were submitted.
"Dogville," which destroys the myth of American small town innocence, and Stephen Frears' illegal-worker drama "Dirty Pretty Things" received four nominations each but were both eclipsed by "Good Bye, Lenin!"
Bruehl plays a teenage son who recreates a slice of communist East Berlin six months after the Berlin Wall falls in 1989 to protect his ailing mother.
His mother, played by Sass, is a devoted communist who falls into a coma just before the Wall comes down and wakes up eight months later. Doctors warn the son that the shock of the changes sweeping the country could kill her.
So he painstakingly recreates a small East German world in their apartment, removing all signs of the Western capitalism that has overrun east Germany to stop her learning that the Cold War has ended.
Copyright 2003
Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
