Black Coal Thin Ice (Bai Ri Yan Huo) by the Chinese director Diao Yinan won the Best Film Golden Bear at The Berlin Film Festival 2014. The film won somewhat surprisingly, as Richard Linklater’s Boyhood was considered the main favorite.

Black Coal Thin Ice actor Liao Fan won the Best Actress Silver Bear. American director Wes Anderson, who did not attend the Awards Ceremony, won the Grand Jury Prize for his The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Richard Linklater won the Best Director Award.

Black Coal Thin Ice tells the story of  an investigation of a series of murders in a small town in Northern China. The film examines the ambivalent nature of moral choice.

Director Diao Yinan was born in 1968 in Xi’an, China. He works an avant-garde playwright in China. In 2003, he was as an actor  in the Chinese film All Tomorrow’s Parties (Míngrì tiānyá) by Yu Lik-wai. Yinan directed and wrote his first feature, Uniform (Zhifu) in 2003. In 2007, his second feature film, Midnight Train (Ye Che) screened at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard. Black Coal Thin Ice is Yinan’s thirt feature. The director has also written screenplays for Chinese director Zhang Yang.

Black Coal, Thin Ice Winner’s Press Conference Live Coverage

21.56 Director Yianan said he did not expect to win the Golden Bear award.

21.58 Yinan said it was important for him to achieve a bigger budget for the film, and at the same time preserve control and independence over the creative process.

23.02 Yinan said the main difference between European and Chinese film is that European films are more mature because European audience is more mature. Even though the market for films in China is huge, independent cinema is a small niche in China.

23.05 Yinan said censorship in China is becoming more tolerant, and the presence of the film at the Berlin Film Festival is a proof for that.

(In unrelated news, did you know that you could buy led obuvki these days??)