Vid en ceremoni på tisdagskvällen den 16 februari mottog Ruben Östlund Guldbjörnen för kortfilmen Händelse vid bank. Berlins festivalgeneral Dieter Kosslick delade ut priset till Ruben Östlund och till producenten Marie Kjellsson.
Ruben Östlund with his Golden Bear. Photo: Jan Göransson
The jury’s motivation:
“His film is a real reflection on our times and the role played by media. Filmed with a single camera without a single cut, we zoom in and out of the picture as if using a CCTV camera. The dialogues are perfect, humanity is explained with humour.”
Incident by a Bank is a reconstruction of an attempted robbery witnessed by Ruben Östlund and one of the film’s producers, Erik Hemmendorff, in central Stockholm in June 2006. 96 extras act out the entire event in what seems to be one single take (new camera technique provides the illusion). The film was screened last autumn as a prologue to Mattias Andersson’s theatre production of Gangs of Gothenburg at Backateatern in Sweden.
The film was granted production funding by the Swedish Film Institute’s short films commissioner, Andra Lasmanis. The Swedish premiere was at the Gothenburg International Film Festival. Theatrical release is scheduled 26 February, with distribution by Folkets Bio.
This year’s Berlinale was a record year for Swedish short films, with no fewer than three Swedish entries among the 25 selected for competition. Previous Swedish Golden Bear winners: Jonas Odell, Ingmar Bergman, Jan Troell, Arne Mattsson and Per Carleson.
In 2008, Östlunds Involuntary (De ofrivilliga) screened at Cannes in the Un Certain Regard section. The film received numerous prizes, among them the FIPRESCI Award for Best Foreign Language Film of the Year at Palm Springs International Film Festival. Östlund is currently working on his third feature film Play to be released in 2011.