{"id":11315,"date":"2026-02-13T01:55:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T01:55:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/11315\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T01:55:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T01:55:14","slug":"sean-baker-michelle-yeoh-no-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/11315\/","title":{"rendered":"Sean Baker, Michelle Yeoh, No Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tBerlin Film Festival<\/a> kicked off on Thursday night with a spirit of hope, despite festivalgoers braving cold and wet weather as a heavy rainstorm infiltrated the city.<\/p>\n

\n\tStars walking the red carpet \u2014 umbrellas and raincoats in tow \u2014 included Sean Baker<\/a>, Bella Ramsey, Karim A\u00efnouz, Neil Patrick Harris, Radu Jude, Daniel Br\u00fchl and Lars Eidinger. Baker was on hand to award this year\u2019s Honorary Golden Bear to Oscar-winner Michelle Yeoh<\/a>, appropriately sheathed on gold, who stars in his latest project, the film \u201cSandiwara\u201d in collaboration with fashion house Self-Portrait.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs he arrived on stage, Baker praised the Berlinale for being \u201ca festival that has always championed bold voices, risk takers, and artists who refuse to be put in a single box.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhich makes tonight\u2019s honoree pretty much perfect,\u201d he added. \u201cMichelle Yeoh is a once-in a-generation screen presence, the kind who doesn\u2019t just appear in movies, but the kind that redefines the temperature of the room.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn accepting the award, Yeoh said to Baker that she looks forward to working with him again. \u201cJust no sex scenes,\u201d she laughed. Yeoh also noted that Berlin always champions bold artists, adding that when she was a young artist, Berlin welcomed her. Her voice broke when she got personal: \u201cA part of me is still that young girl who simply wanted to make her parents proud. My father is no longer here to see this moment. But I carry him with me, his discipline, his steadiness, his belief that if something is worth doing, it is worth doing well. And if he could see me here tonight, holding this Golden Bear, I know he would smile.\u201d Yeoh received a standing ovation from the crowd, who were moved by her speech.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut one thing notably missing from the opening ceremony was an emphasis on politics and current events. Unlike last year, when Tilda Swinton made a fiery speech in which she denounced mass murder and Trump\u2019s plan to make Gaza into a riviera, this edition\u2019s ceremony focused on the art of filmmaking. The only big political stands came during the red carpet, when a group of festivalgoers held up signs featuring an anti-fascist quote from Hannah Arendt while actors Banafshe Hourmazdi, Jasmin Tabatabai, Pheline Roggan and author D\u00fczen Tekkal bore signs saying \u201cFree Iran.\u201d During the actual ceremony, the mood was kept light, with Yeoh only hinting at a \u201cdivided world\u201d in her speech. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe competition jury, led by German director Wim Wenders<\/a>, was also reluctant to discuss political matters during their press conference earlier in the day. \u201cWe have to stay out of politics because if we make movies that are dedicatedly political, we enter the field of politics,\u201d Wenders responded. \u201cBut we are the counterweight of politics, we are the opposite of politics. We have to do the work of people, not the work of politicians.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFestival chief Tricia Tuttle, who is celebrating her second year at the Berlinale helm, also put a focus on indie filmmaking during her time on stage. Appearing with co-directors of film programming Jacqueline Lyanga and Michael St\u00fctz, she said she feels that the industry is \u201cin really great shape\u201d as she teased this year\u2019s festival lineup.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s really thriving and it\u2019s been so great to see so many filmmakers throughout the year out there and also in this room who have made such beautiful work, so varied,\u201d Tuttle said, adding: \u201cOf course, we do have some work to do as an industry on infrastructure, but I also am very, very encouraged by how resilient the industry is.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThis year\u2019s opening film is \u201cNo Good Men\u201d by celebrated Afghan director Shahrbanoo Sadat. The rom-com follows a camerawoman at a Kabul TV station who becomes entangled with the station\u2019s star male journalist just before the 2021 fall of Kabul to the Taliban. Of making the movie, which is the first Afghan film to feature an on-screen kiss, Sadat told Variety<\/a>: \u201cMy film is not an agenda film. I didn\u2019t try to put it in there for some special reason. But it\u2019s interesting, because Afghan society is very conservative. So whenever something is not allowed, the demand for it is even higher.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThis edition\u2019s lineup \u2014 though lacking last year\u2019s double whammy of star power courtesy of Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet and Jacob Elordi \u2014 still offers several buzzy premieres, including the European debut of Charli xcx\u2019s \u201cThe Moment\u201d and Karim A\u00efnouz\u2019s family satire \u201cRosebush Pruning,\u201d which features Callum Turner, Elle Fanning, Riley Keough and more. Other films to watch include \u201cAt the Sea,\u201d Korn\u00e9l Mundrucz\u00f3\u2019s latest potential Oscar vehicle touting a fearless performance from Amy Adams, and the international bows of Sundance standouts \u201cJosephine\u201d and \u201cThe Weight.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBerlin Film Festival runs through Feb. 22. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Berlin Film Festival kicked off on Thursday night with a spirit of hope, despite festivalgoers braving cold and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11316,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[112,3146,190,4027,4028,4654],"class_list":{"0":"post-11315","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-berlin","8":"tag-berlin","9":"tag-berlin-film-festival","10":"tag-germany","11":"tag-michelle-yeoh","12":"tag-sean-baker","13":"tag-wim-wenders"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}