BERLIN - Chinese drama "Tuya`s Marriage" about a herdswoman and her two husbands won the Golden Bear prize for best picture Saturday at the 57th Berlin Film Festival.
Director Wang Quan`an said his unconventional love story set on the Inner Mongolia steppe carried a message about the impact of capitalism on rural communities.
"I think it gives us time to reflect on what we are losing due to economic expansion. We will never get it back."
He said he could not imagine a better gift for Chinese New Year than winning the festival`s top prize.
"When I started making films, my teacher said film should show people`s dreams." he said. "This film made my dreams come true."
"Tuya`s Marriage" (Tuya De Hunshi), which was widely tipped as a favourite for the Golden Bear after its screening last Saturday, was chosen the best of 22 pictures.
Germany`s Nina Hoss picked up the Silver Bear for best actress Saturday for her restrained but riveting performance in the drama "Yella" by popular avant-garde filmmaker Christian Petzold.
"There are no crying fits, it is really discreet acting, so it is all the more wonderful to win an award for this role," she told reporters.
Hoss, 31, plays an east German woman fleeing joblessness and a failed marriage for a new life in the west. A twist at the end led Petzold to call the film an existentialist "horror film."
"I was sure it was going to go to Marianne Faithfull," a stunned Hoss said, referring to the British actress who was widely picked to win for her role in "Irina Palm" as a woman who becomes a sex worker to pay her grandson`s hospital bills.
Argentina`s Julio Chavez, 50, won the Silver Bear prize for best actor for his role in "The Other" as a man trying to begin a new life after his father falls ill and his wife becomes pregnant. He was not in the German capital to accept the prize.
Israeli filmmaker Joseph Cedar won the Silver Bear honour for best director for his drama "Beaufort".
Cedar, 38, tells of the fraught departure of the last Israeli unit from Lebanon in 2000 in an emotional film made by a crew and cast marked by the conflict.
"I want to wish us all that our leaders be fearful of war and find the courage to end it," he said.
In a strong year for Asian films at the Berlinale, South Korean star director Park Chan-Wook accepted the Alfred Bauer Prize for work of particular innovation for his sci-fi romantic comedy "I`m a Cyborg, but That`s OK."
"I would like to share this award with my wife. She is very unhappy with my career as a director. I am not home for weeks, busy all the time and even when I am home my head is full of other thoughts," he said.
"She is now here sharing this honour with me -- I hope she will now forgive me. When I get home, I hope she will tell our friends, `My husband is a director but that`s OK`."
British teen-angst film "Hallam Foe" won the Silver Bear for best soundtrack. It consisted almost entirely of known British music chosen by director David Mackenzie.
"I wanted to deejay my own score. I am really happy you liked it," he said.
The jury was headed by Paul Schrader and included actors Gael Garcia Bernal and Willem Dafoe, Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass, Hong Kong producer Nansun Shi, Danish film editor Molly Malene Stensgaard and veteran German actor Mario Adorf.
"To be honest, it was remarkably harmonious," Schrader told the audience at the gala awards ceremony about selecting the winners.
Among the favourites shut out for the prizes were German-Austrian production "The Counterfeiters," which told an extraordinary true story about a secret Nazi operation to forge foreign currency, and the Czech feature "I Served the King of England" about an ambitious waiter who is a witness to history.
More than 370 pictures screened at the 11-day Berlinale, which ranks along with Cannes and Venice among the top European film festivals.
The event wraps up Sunday with screenings of popular pictures shown during the festival.

02/17/2007 21:36 GMT