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China Wins in Berlin

The 2014 edition of the Berlinale has just come to a close and Asia swept the floor in many categories, with the jury’s Golden Bear award for Best Film going to China’s Black Coal, Thin Ice.
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The 2014 edition of the Berlinale has just come to a close and Asia swept the floor in many categories, with the jury’s Golden Bear award for Best Film going to China’s Black Coal, Thin Ice.
 
 
Set in the late 1990s in northern China, Black Coal, Thin Ice is a noir drama murder mystery at the turn of the millennium, told through enigmatic flashbacks. Its main character is an alcoholic police officer on suspension (Liao Fan) who falls hard for a mysterious murder suspect (Gwei Lun Mei). 
 
Director Diao Yinnan’s third feature film follows the success of 2007’s Night Train which premiered in the Un Certain Regard competition at the Cannes Film Festival, and his 2003 film, Uniform. 
 
Speaking at the festival’s award ceremony in February, the director was clearly moved by the honour: “It’s really hard to believe that this dream has come true — a dream that I’ve had for such a long time and that didn’t come true for such a long time,” Diao said as he accepted the Golden Bear statuette. “It’s wonderful.” 
 
“Before I left Beijing to come here I said to my mum, I’m not coming back if I don’t win this prize,” he joked. “Thank you very much for not leaving me in the lurch.” 
 
Black Coal, Thin Ice is the first Chinese film to win in Berlin since Tuya De Hunshi (Tuya’s Marriage) by Wang Quan’an in 2007.
 
The film pits Liao’s detective, Zhang Zili against a killer who disposes of dismembered feet in skates, an eye in a bowl of noodles, and other body parts in coal trucks.
 
Liao Fan, who put on 20kg to play the role of detective Zhang Zili, won the ‘Silver Bear Best Actor’ award, making it the only film to win more than one prize at the festival. 
 
While Black Coal, Thin Ice’s opening scene is set in a hot summer, the rest of the film unfolds five years later, almost entirely in winter. Director Diao, said he ignored advice that “Cold films don’t sell”, wanting to portray the warmth of emotions beneath to help people “feel less alone with our dark side”.
 
Diao’s winning entry was one of three Chinese films in the 20-movie competition this year. Another Chinese entry, director Lou Ye’s Blind Massage — an adaptation of a popular novel set largely in a massage centre run by the blind — won the festival’s ‘Outstanding Artistic Contribution’ prize for its cinematography.
 
Most critics felt the prize for Black Coal, Thin Ice was certainly justified.
 
“It represents Chinese cinema, growing in aesthetic strength, that is successfully charting a new path between small films made below the censors’ radar and the bombastic hero epics in a booming domestic market,” Berlin’s daily Der Tagesspiegel said.
 
Diao said his film bridged the gap between pure arthouse and multiplex fare. 
 
“I finally did find the right way to combine a film which has a commercial aspect but which is nonetheless art, so that it’s possible to launch it in these terms,” he said.
 
The director said Chinese films were gaining ground in Western cinemas, thanks in part to their exposure at major festivals. 
 
“Every time we take our films abroad it seems that there is an ever greater enthusiasm for Chinese cinema,” he said.
 
The film has yet to be released in China but a state media report said it had received a government permit for screening, with release possible in April or May. 
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