The 71st Berlin Film Festival wraps up on Friday after a pandemic-era edition unlike any before, with the awarding of its Golden Bear best picture prize and its first "gender neutral" acting gongs.

The later, shorter, all-online Berlinale which started Monday replaced the usual 11-day star-studded extravaganza normally held in February.

Critics watching the movies on their laptops said that for all the lack of red-carpet glamour, it was a vintage year for the main selection of 15 films, with few duds and a clutch of gems.

"Petite Maman", a moving coming-of-age drama by France's Celine Sciamma, and "Mr Bachmann and His Class", an ambitious German school documentary, were lavished with praise.

The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw called Sciamma's latest "a spellbinding jewel" and a "beautiful fairytale reverie", while New York-based critic David Ehrlich compared it to the Japanese classic "Spirited Away" for blurring the "soft borders between real and invented worlds".

- Outdated sex distinctions - 
Weighing in at nearly four hours, Maria Speth's "Mr Bachmann and His Class" portrays an iconoclast teacher on the cusp of retirement who takes his secondary school pupils from a range of immigrant backgrounds under his wing.

Indiewire said it was "one of the year's most hopeful movies" while Britain's ScreenDaily said the affable Bachmann seemed like "Bill Murray's German cousin" with a knack for boosting his pupils' self-esteem in the face of poverty and discrimination.

Germany turned in two light crowdpleasers -- albeit without the crowds -- with actor Daniel Bruehl's directorial debut "Next Door" and "Unorthodox" director Maria Schrader's sci-fi romance "I'm Your Man".

In the latter movie, British star Dan Stevens ("Downton Abbey") uses his fluent German to play a custom-made humanoid robot designed to win the heart of a flinty Berlin museum researcher.

Variety called him a "wry revelation, progressing from rigid, unworldly physical comedy to near-living, breathing emotional turmoil".

The enthusiasm raised speculation Stevens could walk away with the Berlinale's first "best performance" Silver Bear, after the festival did away with its best actor and actress trophies. A supporting performance will also be rewarded.

Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swinton have both welcomed Berlin's bid to set aside outdated sex distinctions, a move the festival's director Mariette Rissenbeek told AFP was aimed at "spurring the discussion about gender justice" in the entertainment industry.

- 'Gripping and impressive' - 
Reviewers also swooned over the first Georgian picture in competition in almost 30 years, "What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?", about two lovers who don't recognise each other when a curse changes their appearance.

Variety reviewer Jessica Kiang called the "witty, warm, surprising modern folktale" her favourite of the race.

Mexico's Alonso Ruizpalacios premiered the Netflix feature "A Cop Movie" which mixes documentary and narrative techniques to look at the struggles of police work in the country's capital.

The Hollywood Reporter hailed it as a "an intriguing, completely deconstructed look at what it takes to both be a cop and to play one, especially in a place where cops are often regarded as criminals themselves".&nbsp;

Meanwhile German drama "Fabian: Going to the Dogs", a Weimar-era tragedy about the descent into fascism, drew favourable comparisons to the hit series "Babylon Berlin", with Der Spiegel magazine calling it "gripping" and "impressive".&nbsp;

The Berlinale jury is made up of six previous Golden Bear winners including last year's laureate, dissident Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof, who claimed the prize for "There Is No Evil", about capital punishment.

Five of the members saw the films in person in the German capital in a specially reserved cinema, while Rasoulof watched from Tehran under house arrest

The 71st Berlin Film Festival wraps up on Friday after a pandemic-era edition unlike any before, with the awarding of its Golden Bear best picture prize and its first "gender neutral" acting gongs.

The 71st Berlin Film Festival wraps up on Friday after a pandemic-era edition unlike any before, with the awarding of its Golden Bear best picture prize and its first "gender neutral" acting gongs. The later, shorter, all-online Berlinale which started Monday replaced the usual 11-day star-studded extravaganza normally held in February. Critics watching the movies on their laptops said that for all the lack of red-carpet glamour, it was a vintage year for the main selection of 15 films, with few duds and a clutch of gems. "Petite Maman", a moving coming-of-age drama by France's Celine Sciamma, and "Mr Bachmann and His Class", an ambitious German school documentary, were lavished with praise. The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw called Sciamma's latest "a spellbinding jewel" and a "beautiful fairytale reverie", while New York-based critic David Ehrlich compared it to the Japanese classic "Spirited Away" for blurring the "soft borders between real and invented worlds". - Outdated sex distinctions - Weighing in at nearly four hours, Maria Speth's "Mr Bachmann and His Class" portrays an iconoclast teacher on the cusp of retirement who takes his secondary school pupils from a range of immigrant backgrounds under his wing. Indiewire said it was "one of the year's most hopeful movies" while Britain's ScreenDaily said the affable Bachmann seemed like "Bill Murray's German cousin" with a knack for boosting his pupils' self-esteem in the face of poverty and discrimination. Germany turned in two light crowdpleasers -- albeit without the crowds -- with actor Daniel Bruehl's directorial debut "Next Door" and "Unorthodox" director Maria Schrader's sci-fi romance "I'm Your Man". In the latter movie, British star Dan Stevens ("Downton Abbey") uses his fluent German to play a custom-made humanoid robot designed to win the heart of a flinty Berlin museum researcher. Variety called him a "wry revelation, progressing from rigid, unworldly physical comedy to near-living, breathing emotional turmoil". The enthusiasm raised speculation Stevens could walk away with the Berlinale's first "best performance" Silver Bear, after the festival did away with its best actor and actress trophies. A supporting performance will also be rewarded. Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swinton have both welcomed Berlin's bid to set aside outdated sex distinctions, a move the festival's director Mariette Rissenbeek told AFP was aimed at "spurring the discussion about gender justice" in the entertainment industry. - 'Gripping and impressive' - Reviewers also swooned over the first Georgian picture in competition in almost 30 years, "What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?", about two lovers who don't recognise each other when a curse changes their appearance. Variety reviewer Jessica Kiang called the "witty, warm, surprising modern folktale" her favourite of the race. Mexico's Alonso Ruizpalacios premiered the Netflix feature "A Cop Movie" which mixes documentary and narrative techniques to look at the struggles of police work in the country's capital. The Hollywood Reporter hailed it as a "an intriguing, completely deconstructed look at what it takes to both be a cop and to play one, especially in a place where cops are often regarded as criminals themselves". Meanwhile German drama "Fabian: Going to the Dogs", a Weimar-era tragedy about the descent into fascism, drew favourable comparisons to the hit series "Babylon Berlin", with Der Spiegel magazine calling it "gripping" and "impressive". The Berlinale jury is made up of six previous Golden Bear winners including last year's laureate, dissident Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof, who claimed the prize for "There Is No Evil", about capital punishment. Five of the members saw the films in person in the German capital in a specially reserved cinema, while Rasoulof watched from Tehran under house arrest

Berlin Festival to award best film, 'gender-neutral' acting gongs

One of Eastern Europe's most acclaimed directors argues corruption, hypocrisy and racism are far more obscene than pornography in a Berlin film festival contender about a teacher whose sex tape winds up on the internet.

"Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn" by Romania's Radu Jude is perhaps the most daring of the 15 movies vying for the Golden Bear's top prize on Friday at the Berlinale, which has gone all-virtual due to the pandemic.

Opening with an extremely real-looking hardcore porn video, it tells the story of Emi, a junior high school history teacher in Bucharest.

The clip is taken from an amateur movie she shot with her husband that makes its way from PornHub to the mobile phones of her colleagues, students and their parents.

With disputes over social distancing and mask wearing already jacking up tensions and exposing social divisions, Emi fights to save her job and her reputation.

The conflict finally boils over at a surreal parent-teacher conference where representatives of Romanian institutions including the Orthodox church, the military and the nouveau riche professional class put Emi on a kind of show trial.

Although the sex tape is the matter at hand, Emi's defence of Roma children at the school, her insistence on teaching about Romania's complicity in the Holocaust, and her calling out of colleagues' sexism all come under attack.

The showdown reaches a farcical climax The Hollywood Reporter called "worthy of vintage John Waters".

Jude belongs to the new wave of Romanian cinema scooping up prizes at festivals around the world.

He won the Berlinale's best director prize in 2015 for "Aferim!" about the roots of anti-Roma discrimination.

Romania submitted as Oscar contenders both that film and his 2018 feature "I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians" about the 1941 Odessa massacre by Romanians.

"Many of the things that Emi's accused of are things that I was accused of in online comments regarding my previous films," Jude told AFP in a Zoom interview from Bucharest.

"Viewers are invited to make a comparison between the so-called obscenity of this porn video and the bigger obscenity, the public obscenity of the society, of the hypocrisy, of the traces of history that come to us."

- 'Comedy of despair' - 
Shot entirely last summer during the Covid-19 outbreak, the film was adapted to take into account the heightened "aggressiveness" in the air.&nbsp;

"This becomes a metaphor –- people with masks trying to shout at each other. So I collected all the masks I found and chose them for the actors like a costume, like a time capsule."

He said he took inspiration from the sometimes hysterical WhatApp chats among parents from his children's school when he wrote Emi's trial scene.

"When it's about children I have the feeling that sometimes parents give up the facade, give up the politeness and go more directly to their values," he said.

"Because it's about children, this is no joke and we must go to the heart of the problem."

But he said that was no reason not to have some laughs about human frailty.

"There is a comedy of despair, there is a comedy of sexuality, there is a comedy of the human condition if you see it from a certain angle," he said.

"But this doesn't exclude of course being infuriated or angry at some aspects of the society."

One of Eastern Europe's most acclaimed directors argues corruption, hypocrisy and racism are far more obscene than pornography in a Berlin film festival contender about a teacher whose sex tape winds up on the internet.

One of Eastern Europe's most acclaimed directors argues corruption, hypocrisy and racism are far more obscene than pornography in a Berlin film festival contender about a teacher whose sex tape winds up on the internet. "Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn" by Romania's Radu Jude is perhaps the most daring of the 15 movies vying for the Golden Bear's top prize on Friday at the Berlinale, which has gone all-virtual due to the pandemic. Opening with an extremely real-looking hardcore porn video, it tells the story of Emi, a junior high school history teacher in Bucharest. The clip is taken from an amateur movie she shot with her husband that makes its way from PornHub to the mobile phones of her colleagues, students and their parents. With disputes over social distancing and mask wearing already jacking up tensions and exposing social divisions, Emi fights to save her job and her reputation. The conflict finally boils over at a surreal parent-teacher conference where representatives of Romanian institutions including the Orthodox church, the military and the nouveau riche professional class put Emi on a kind of show trial. Although the sex tape is the matter at hand, Emi's defence of Roma children at the school, her insistence on teaching about Romania's complicity in the Holocaust, and her calling out of colleagues' sexism all come under attack. The showdown reaches a farcical climax The Hollywood Reporter called "worthy of vintage John Waters". Jude belongs to the new wave of Romanian cinema scooping up prizes at festivals around the world. He won the Berlinale's best director prize in 2015 for "Aferim!" about the roots of anti-Roma discrimination. Romania submitted as Oscar contenders both that film and his 2018 feature "I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians" about the 1941 Odessa massacre by Romanians. "Many of the things that Emi's accused of are things that I was accused of in online comments regarding my previous films," Jude told AFP in a Zoom interview from Bucharest. "Viewers are invited to make a comparison between the so-called obscenity of this porn video and the bigger obscenity, the public obscenity of the society, of the hypocrisy, of the traces of history that come to us." - 'Comedy of despair' - Shot entirely last summer during the Covid-19 outbreak, the film was adapted to take into account the heightened "aggressiveness" in the air. "This becomes a metaphor –- people with masks trying to shout at each other. So I collected all the masks I found and chose them for the actors like a costume, like a time capsule." He said he took inspiration from the sometimes hysterical WhatApp chats among parents from his children's school when he wrote Emi's trial scene. "When it's about children I have the feeling that sometimes parents give up the facade, give up the politeness and go more directly to their values," he said. "Because it's about children, this is no joke and we must go to the heart of the problem." But he said that was no reason not to have some laughs about human frailty. "There is a comedy of despair, there is a comedy of sexuality, there is a comedy of the human condition if you see it from a certain angle," he said. "But this doesn't exclude of course being infuriated or angry at some aspects of the society."

Sex tape satire at Berlin fest tackles pandemic-era 'hypocrisy'

Environmental activists performed a flashmob on Saturday (February 29) at Berlin's International Film Festival to demand greater climate protection.

Activists occupy Berlinale red carpet to demand climate action

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Berlin Festival to award best film, 'gender-neutral' acting gongs

Sex tape satire at Berlin fest tackles pandemic-era 'hypocrisy'

Activists occupy Berlinale red carpet to demand climate action