The award ceremony for the 75th Berlin international film festival has kicked off in the German capital, with the first winners announced.
Brandon Kramer’s Holding Liat, a harrowing look at an Israeli-American family whose lives were upended when two of them were taken hostage by Hamas on October 7th, 2023, won the best documentary prize. Accepting the honor, Kramer said his film offered “no easy answers” but tried to capture the “nuances of one family” in crisis.
Mexican filmmaker Ernesto Martínez Bucio won the best feature debut honor in the festival’s new Perspectives section, winning for the wonderfully-titled The Devil Smokes (and Saves the Burnt Matches in the Same Box), a family dramas set in Mexico City in the 1990s that follows fives siblings abandoned by their parents with their schizophrenic grandmother who find the barrier between the real and the imaginary begin to disolve.
The ensemble of Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s The Ice Tower, a loose adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s fable The Snow Queen, won the Silver Bear for outstanding artistic contribution. Oscar-winning French star Marion Cottilard plays a dual role in the feature, as both a 1970s film star and the winter monarch herself.
“I don’t think films change the world,” said Hadzihalilovic, accepting the prize, “but I think films help us to dream especially in this difficult moment. Vive le cinéma!”
2025 Berlin Film Festival Winners (Updating Live)
Golden Bear for Best Film
Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize
Silver Bear Jury Prize
Silver Bear for Best Director
Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance
Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance
Silver Bear for Best Screenplay
Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution
For the ensemble of The Ice Tower, director Lucile Hadzihalilovic
Best Directorial Debut in Perspectives
The Devil Smokes (and Saves the Burnt Matches in the Same Box), director Ernesto Martínez Bucio
Best Documentary
Holding Liat, director Brandon Kramer
