Senegalese-French director Mati Diop on the red carpet at Berlinale

Senegalese-French director Mati Diop’s film “Dahomey” about African treasures looted by French colonial forces and returned to the West African country of Benin after 130 years, won the top Golden Bear prize for best film at the 74^th Berlinale festival on Saturday.

“We can either get rid of the past as an unpleasing burden that only hinders our evolution,” Diop, 41, said in accepting the award on the stage of the Berlinale Palast in Berlin, where she also called for support for the people of Palestine.

”Or we can take the responsibility of using it as a basis to keep us moving forward. You have to choose. We are among those who refuse to forget. We are among those who refuse to accept amnesia as a method.”

English actress Emily Watson took the Silver Bear for best supporting performance for “Small Things Like These”, starring Cillian Murphy, in which she plays a ruthless Mother Superior in charge of one of the Magdalene laundries where tens of thousands of Irish unwed mothers were incarcerated.

“I can’t stand here without talking of the thousands and thousands of young women whose lives were devastated by the collusion between the Catholic church and the state in Ireland,” Watson said. “I’m very, very proud to have this. Thank you so much.”

The Silver Bear for best leading performance went to Sebastian Stan for his portrayal of a severely disfigured actor who is cured of his distorted facial condition but in doing so misses out on a role that would have made his career.

Stan thanked director Aaron Schimberg for “believing in me, to lead this important story, a story that’s not only about acceptance of identity and self-truth but about disfigurement and disability”.

The Silver Bear for best director went to Nelson Carlo De Los Santos Arias of the Dominican Republic for “Pepe”, a film about a rogue hippopotamus among the herd that Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar imported to his Magdalena River property, and how the Medellin drug cartel’s power affected the entire region.

The Silver Bear Jury Prize was awarded to the French film “L’Empire”, a sci-fi satire directed and written by Bruno Dumont, who has made a career of mostly high-brow films. Dumont, saying his English was not great, pulled out a mobile phone and played a recording of what he said was an acceptance speech by the Silver Bear he was holding in his hands.

“Normally a cinema film is a cinema film, that is to say something cinematographic and profoundly humanistic that explores the whole world of human beings indiscriminately, and that’s all there is to it. Thank you,” the pre-recorded bear’s voice said.

Other winners:

– Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize to Hong Sangsoo for “Yeohaengjaui pilyo” (A Traveler’s Needs)

– Silver Bear for Best Screenplay to Matthias Glasner for “Sterben” (Dying)

– Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to Martin Gschlacht for the cinematography in “Des Teufels Bad” (The Devil’s Bath)

By Michael Roddy