22 February 2010 | Balkan and East European cinema triumphed at this year’s jubilee Berlin International Film Festival, international media reported, in reference to the Turkish, Romanian and Russian films that swept up the festival’s awards.

Turkish director Semih Kaplanoglu’s “Honey” (“Bal”), the third part of his reverse-order trilogy after Egg and Milk, became the second Turkish film to win Berlinale’s highest award, the Golden Bear, after “Dry Summer” (“Susuz Yaz) in 1964.

The Turkish-German co-production, described by Screen Daily critic Lee Marshall as “very beautiful and very studied, with a sometimes oppressive sense of directorial control”, also earned the Ecumenical Jury’s prize for best film in the competition.

The jury took the decision to award “Honey” the Golden Bear for Best Film “quickly and unanimously,” Werner Herzog, one of the most significant personalities of New German Cinema, and a member of this year’s International Jury, told media. “We didn’t need a long time to decide. We were all equally conquered by the film’s poetry,” he said at the official awards ceremony.

The other Balkan triumph at this year’s Berlinale was the film “If I Want To Whistle, I Whistle” by Romanian director Florian Serban, who won the Alfred Bauer Prize recognising new perspectives in the art of film and the Grand Prix of the Jury.

Described as a “drama on Romania’s lost generation,” according to Cineuropa, the film tells the story of 18-year old Silviu, who is abandoned by his mother, who left the country to find work abroad, and has a younger brother to care for.

“Many Romanian women emigrate to find work in the West, and after 10 years the results are evident: enormous problems among kids who raise themselves or with faraway parents,” the director said of the film’s theme.

These latest recognitions only confirm already observed trends, as testified by previous awards, of the rebirth of Turkish cinema and the highly-acclaimed Romanian films that have made splashes on the international scene in recent years.