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Lebanese Michelle and Noel Keserwany win 'Best Short Film' Golden Bear at Berlinale

Their film "Les chenilles" was inspired by a sentence, taken from an article by Fawwaz Traboulsi entitled "Un amour de soie" (published in L'Orient Express in 1996) and which explores the relationship between the women of Mount Lebanon and foreign silk factories in the 19th century.

Lebanese musicians, writers and filmmakers Michelle Keserwany (right) and Noel Keserwany pose with their medal for 'Best Short Film' during the award ceremony of the 73rd Berlinale International Film Festival in Berlin, on Feb. 25, 2023. (Credit: Jِrg Carstensen /pool/AFP)

Les chenilles (Caterpillars in English) by Lebanese musicians, writers and filmmakers Michelle Keserwany and Noel Keserwany on Saturday night won the Golden Bear for "Best Short Film" at the 73rd Berlinale International Film Festival in Berlin.

"It is in the tepidness of breasts that caterpillars hatch." This sentence, taken from an article by Fawwaz Traboulsi entitled "Un amour de soie" (published in L'Orient Express in 1996) and which explores the relationship between the women of Mount Lebanon and foreign silk factories in the 19th century, inspired Michelle and Noel Keserwany to make this social, historical but also poetic short film. The film was co-produced by Marine Vaillant (Dewberries Films) and the Biennale de Lyon, represented by curators Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath.

Inspired by this imagery and by the difficult conditions of women's work in the French silk industry in the 19th century in the Levant, and in particular in Mount Lebanon, the Keserwanys created a contemporary story that also addresses the subject of emigration.

'Very happy'

"Through carefully arranging image and sound, this complex sensual film transforms the means of woman’s oppression into those of their liberation," the Berlinale jury said, according to an online statement. "When the third person becomes an 'I,' the women are no longer objects of exploitation, but have turned into subjects. The silkworms will metamorphose into spiders, whose nets do not serve silk production, but their own survival. An immediate friendship connects two women, in whose bodies the consequences of colonialization are inscribed. The magic of their bond will continue to exist in our perception. The Golden Bear for Best Short Film goes to Michelle and Noel Keserwany’s Les Chenilles," the statement concluded.

"This is our first short film. It is also the first time it is shown in a festival and the first time we won a prize," Michelle Keserwany told L'Orient-Le Jour.

"We were very happy because the film will be now shown to a wider audience. This award allows us to work on our next projects with more ease," Keserwany added.

Golden Bear prize

The Berlin film festival on Saturday awarded its Golden Bear top prize to a documentary by French director Nicolas Philibert and its best acting award to an 8-year-old girl in what jury chief Kristen Stewart described as a "boundary-pushing" event.

On the Adamant, coming more than 20 years after Philibert's acclaimed education documentary To Be and To Have, is about a floating day-care center for people with psychiatric problems on the Seine in Paris.

Thanking the jury, Philibert, 72, said "that documentary can be considered to be cinema in its own right touches me deeply."

On a night full of surprises, the festival's gender-neutral acting prize was awarded to an 8-year-old, Spain's Sofia Otero. The young actress won the prize for playing a transgender child in "20,000 Species of Bees," the feature debut from Spanish director Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren. 

Critics have lavished praise on the film. Screen Daily, for one, predicted that "arthouse audiences worldwide should respond to the pathos, breadth and humanity of a film that takes a while to build but, when it does, never loses its grip."

Otero, who fought back tears when collecting the award, later told journalists she was "very grateful, very happy."

'Invisible parameters'

Stewart, at 32 the youngest president in the festival's history, said the jury had been asking themselves all week "what makes a movie a movie." They had set aside "invisible parameters" in awarding the Golden Bear, she said, because "when you focus too much on what something is you tend to lose track of what it does. "This is a boundary-pushing festival and so it offers us the opportunity to be expansive in how we define those things, how we value works of art, how we categorize them," she said.

There was more success for France as Philippe Garrel, 74, won the Silver Bear for best director for The Plough, a drama about three siblings from a family of puppeteers coping with the death of their father. Garrel dedicated the prize to his children and to French-Swiss director Jean-Luc Godard, "a great master for many of us," who died last September.

Second prize went to Afire from German director Christian Petzold, about a group of friends whose holiday retreat to the Baltic coast goes horribly wrong. Variety called it "wincingly well-observed and acidly funny," while the Hollywood Reporter said it was "a deceptively simple and straightforward but emotionally layered film."

Coming in third was Bad Living by Portugal's Joao Canijo, about several female members of the same family who run a dilapidated hotel and are also struggling with their relationships to one another. 

Star power

On the Adamant offers an intimate glimpse into the lives of adults and their carers in the Parisian day-care center, which puts an accent on offering them a creative outlet. The film is "an attempt to overturn the image we have" of people with psychiatric problems, Philibert said.  "The cliches are deep-rooted. The film tries to unravel them [but] there is a long way to go."

The Hollywood Reporter praised the film's "warmth and enthusiasm," calling it "a portrait of several individuals who, despite their noticeable disabilities, are capable of producing original and moving works of art."

French President Emmanuel Macron congratulated both Philibert and his subjects on the win, calling the film a "story of humanity and commitment."

Documentaries are regularly selected in major international film competitions, but rarely win awards. Last year, the Venice Film Festival awarded its Golden Lion to a documentary about the opiate crisis in the United States by Laura Poitras (All The Beauty And The Bloodshed).

After two years of a reduced format due to pandemic restrictions, the 11-day Berlinale got back in full swing this year, with A-listers such as Cate Blanchett, Helen Mirren and Steven Spielberg walking the red carpet.

The festival, which ranks alongside Cannes and Venice as one of Europe's top cinema showcases, also marked the first anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and highlighted anti-government protests in Iran with new feature films and documentaries.

There were 19 films from around the world vying for this year's Golden Bear, which was awarded at a gala ceremony by a jury led by Stewart.

Les chenilles (Caterpillars in English) by Lebanese musicians, writers and filmmakers Michelle Keserwany and Noel Keserwany on Saturday night won the Golden Bear for "Best Short Film" at the 73rd Berlinale International Film Festival in Berlin."It is in the tepidness of breasts that caterpillars hatch." This sentence, taken from an article by Fawwaz Traboulsi entitled "Un...