There are lots of film festivals that give awards to LGBT-themed films, but there’s no doubt that one of the most important is the Teddy Award, handed out each year at the Berlin International Film Festival. It has a good history of picking great movies, including Ira Sachs’ excellent Keep The Lights On, Marco Berger’s Absent, Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right and John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig And The Angry Inch, along with last year’s winner, the wonderful The Way He Looks.
Now this year’s Teddys have been given out, with Sebastian Silva’s Nasty Baby taking the Best Feature prize. The movie stars Silva, alongside Kristen Wiig and Tunde Adebimpe, and centres on ‘Freddy, an artist whose desire for a baby has become something of an obsession.’ Freddy’s boyfriend is happy to have a child, and their friend Polly (Wiig) agrees to carry it, but the growing obsession may lead them to take a life. It’s described as a savagely satirical portrait of a group of presumptuous and self-absorbed bohemians.
The Best Documentary prize went to Aldo Garay’s El hombre nuevo (The New Man), about a trans* woman who was born in Nicaragua but raised in Uruguay, who returns to rediscover her home country. The Jury Prize meanwhile was handed to Stories Of Our Lives, an anthology of five short films about LGBT life in Kenya.
Here’s the full list of 2015 winners:
Best feature film: Nasty Baby – Sebastián Silva
Best documentary: El hombre nuevo – Aldo Garay
Best short film: San Cristobal – Omar Zúñiga Hidalgo
Jury award: Stories of Our Lives – Jim Chuchu
Special award: Udo Kier
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