Turkish film Honey (Bal) has taken the top prize at this year's Berlin Film Festival.
The film, about a young boy who goes looking for his beekeeper dad, is directed by Semih Kaplanoglu, who won a FIPRESCI prize for his previous film Milk (Sut).
Likely to upstage that on the world stage, however, is the fact that Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer won the Silver Bear for best director. Polanski was unable to attend the festival since he is currently under house arrest in Switzerland pending the outcome of a move by US authorities to extradite him over his sex with a minor conviction back in 1977.
His producer Alain Sarde accepted the award for the film about a journalist helping a British prime minister write his memoirs. He said: "I am sure Roman will be very happy.
"However, when I was lamenting with him that he cannot be with us, he said to me, 'even if I could, I wouldn't because the last time I went to a festival to get a prize, I ended up in jail.'"
This was a reference to the fact that the director was arrested in Switzerland last September after travelling to Zurich to pick up a lifetime achievement award.
The Silver Bear Grand Jury Grand Prix, meanwhile, was scooped by Florin Serban's prison drama If I Want To Whistle, I Whistle (Eu cand vreau sa fluier, fluier) - which sees a kid who turns to desperate measures to escape his last days in reform school to 'save' his brother from his estranged mum. He also won the Alfred Bauer Prize for innovation.
The best actress awardwent to Shinobu Terajima for her role in Caterpillar as a wife who has to care for her husband who loses all his limbs in the Sino-Japanese war.
Sergei Puskepalis won the best actor accolade for his role in Alexei Popogrebsky's Russian thriller about two men's last days at a remote polar station, How I Ended This Summer (Kak ya provel etim letom).
How I Ended This Summer also saw Pavel Kostomarov pick up an award for camerawrk, while best script went to Wang Quan'an and Na Jin for Alone Together (Tuan Yuan).
