Romanian Film ‘Child’s Pose’ Wins At Berlin Film Festival

A Romanian film titled Child’s Pose has won the top prize at the Berlin Film Festival. The film centers around a woman’s race to protect her son by covering up his responsibility for an accident in which a boy is fatally injured. Child’s Pose has won the the Berlin film festival’s top Golden Bear award on Saturday, the highest honor a film can win.

Child’s Pose,directed by Calin Peter Netzer, was selected as the winner from a field of 19 films that included a strong eastern European contingent this year — the 63rd edition of the event, the first of the year’s major European film festivals. Netzer said he was “a little bit speechless” at the award.

The tale of corruption and guilt depicts the efforts of an upper-class mother, played by Luminita Gheorghiu, to bribe witnesses to give false statements and keep her son — the driver, who was speeding at the time of the accident — out of prison.

“This is about a … pathological relationship between mother and son,” he told reporters later. “The rest is really just a backdrop,” Netzer told reporters, stressing that it is “a very universal story” and that “corruption is not something which is only taking place in Romania.”

I.M.