Berlin Winners List: Ilker Çatak’s ‘Yellow Letters’ Wins Golden Bear As 76th Berlinale Ends As It Began On A Politically Charged Note

German Turkish director Ilker Çatak’s Yellow Letters has won the Golden Bear at the 76th edition of the Berlinale.

In other key prizes, Sandra Hüller snared the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance for her role in Rose; while Grant Gee won best director for Everybody Digs Bill Evans, and Lance Hammer’s Queen at Sea won the Silver Bear Jury Prize as well as Best Supporting Performance for Anna Calder-Marshall and Tom Courtenay. (scroll down for full winners list)

Çatak’s fifth feature after his Oscar-nominated The Teachers’ Lounge, Turkey-set drama Yellow Letters follows an actress and her dramatic arts professor husband whose lives are undone when they fall foul of their authoritarian government.

Jury President Wim Wenders praised the film for its portrait of life under totalitarianism saying the story would chime with and serve as a wakeup call for people all over the world.

His words echoed Deadline critic Damon Wise’s Berlin review in which he described Yellow Letters as “the most important film yet made about Donald Trump’s America”, even if the story unfolds in the Turkey of authoritarian President Recep Tayyip.

Saturday night’s awards ceremony closed yet another politically charged Berlinale, after the relative calm of 2025, sparked by Wenders’ suggestion in the opening press conference that filmmakers should stay out of politics, in response to a question on Gaza and the festival’s failure to publicly declare support of Palestinians.

Festival Director Tricia Tuttle, who is in the second year of a five-year mandate, immediately broached the mood at the festival in a emotional speech as she opened the ceremony.

She said that the Berlinale has taken place “in a world that feels raw and fractured”, but that the Berlinale embraced the pushback and debate.

“We’ve been publicly challenged this year, and that’s good, it does not always feel good, but it is good because it means that the Berlinale matters to people… We’re a very visible cultural institution, an institution that people expect a lot of… I think we all need to hold the fact that we’re living in a polarized moment and embrace the community that we build together, because criticism and speaking up is part of democracy.”

The rawness was more than apparent in an awards ceremony that was politically charged from the get go, with Golden Bear Best Short Film winner Marie-Rose Osta (Someday a Child), shorts jury member Ameer Fakher Eldin, and Palestinian director Abdallah Al-Khatib, winner of the Perspectives First Film Prize for Chronicles From the Siege, using their speeches to decry Israel’s continuing military attacks on Lebanon and Gaza.

“I’m happy to be here to get this prize, but I’m Palestinian, so I have to use this moment to speak about Palestine,” said Al-Khatib. “I was under a lot of pressure to participate in the Berlinale for one reason only, to stand here and say that Palestinians will be free and one day, we will have a great film festival in the middle of Gaza, in the middle of other Palestinian cities.”

“Our festival will stand in solidarity with the people living under siege, under occupation and under dictatorships around the world. We will speak about politics before cinema. We will speak about resistance before art, about freedom before beauty, and about a human being before culture, the long awaited day is coming.”

In a move that Al-Khatib suggested could impact his refugee status in Germany, which is currently his home, the director also used his speech to accuse the German government of being complicit with Israel’s deadly military campaign in Gaza, which has killed more than 80,000 people and left three-quarters of the 2.1 million strong population homeless.

“My final word to the German government,” he said. “You are partners in the genocide in Gaza by Israel. I believe you are intelligent enough to recognize this is true, but you choose not to care. Free Palestine, from now until the end of the world,” he concluded.

A handful of prizes were unveiled ahead of tonight’s ceremony including for the Generation and Panorama sections.

The Crystal Bear in the Generation KPlus went to Allan Deveberton’s Gugu’s World with a Special Mention for Rima Das’ Not A Hero, In Film Generation 14+, the top prize to Fernanda Tovar’s Sad Girlz (Chicas Tristes) with Special Mention for Mees Peijnenburg’s A Family.

The 28th Panorama  Audience Award for best feature film went to Prosecution by Faraz Shariat, with Adrian Goiginger’s Four Minus Three and Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson’s Mouse coming in second and third place respectively.

Keep checking back in for awards updates.

Prizes of the International Jury

Golden Bear — Ilker Çatak’s Yellow Letters

Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize – Salvation by Emim Alper

Silver Bear Jury Prize — Queen At Sea by Lance Hammer

Best Director — Grant Gee for Everybody Digs Bill Evans

Best Leading Performance — Sandra Hüller for Rose

Best Supporting Performance — Anna Calder-Marshall and Tom Courtenay for Queen at Sea

Silver Bear for Best Screenplay — Geneviève Dulude-de Celles for Nina Roza

Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution — Yo (Love is a Rebellious Bird) by  Anna Fitch and Banker White (U.S.)

Perspectives

GFF First Feature Award — Chronicles From the Siege by Abdallah Alkhatib

Special Mention – Forest High (Forêt Ivre) by Manon Coubia

Berlinale Documentary Award

If Pigeons Turned to Gold –  Pepa Lubojacki (Czech Republic)

Shorts

Golden Bear Best Short Film – Someday a Child by Marie-Rose Osta (Lebanon)

Silver Bear Jury Prize (Short Film) — A Woman’s Place Is Everywhere by Fanny Texier (U.S.)

CUPRA Filmmaker Award —  Jingkai Qu for Kleptomania (China)