Tilda Loves Peru. And Everyone Else, Too

Tilda Swinton and her esteemed jury have picked their winners for the Berlinale Festival. The Golden Bear (the top prize) went to The Milk of Sorrow. The movie is being called a "triumphant ode to life" but it sounds gruesome. The title refers to a disease carried in the breast milk of women who were raped.

The photo to the left shows Tilda kissing the hand of the lead actress. That Tilda, she's such a gentleman. Love her! (That's an order from The Film Experience. Not that you needed the shove). If you follow Oscar's foreign film race each year you may recall that the director Claudia Llosa's previous film madeinusa was Peru's submission in 2006. Llosa now seems likely to receive that particular patriotic honor again next fall when Oscar's foreign film official submission list is released. The film blog When I Look Deep In Your Eyes... is thrilled about this acknowledgement for Peru so click on over there for a lot more on that.

Two major prizes went to Germany's Alle Anderen (Everyone Else) including the Silver Bear (second place essentially where it tied with Adrián Biniez's Gigante) and Best Actress for Birgit Minichmayr (pictured right, besting well known actresses like Brenda Blethyn -- Blethyn's co-star in London River won for Best Actor -- and Michelle Pfeiffer in Chéri, previously discussed here) who you may recall as the mother in Perfume: The Story of a Murderer or from her role in the German hit Downfall. So, perhaps Berlinale has clued us in to two foreign film competitors for the next Oscar race. We shall see. Everyone Else will undoubtedly have tough competition within Germany's film industry.

In other foreign film news (busy week leading up to Oscar y'all) Norway may already have identified its next foreign language Oscar hopeful, too. North, which is a road trip comedy on snow scooters, won the Fipresci prize in the Panorama section at Berlinale. Norway doesn't make a ton of movies so it could easily be their submission next season. It's also from the screenwriter of their 2007 submission Gone With the Woman.