TEHRAN – Iranian drama “Ballad of a White Cow” co-directed by Behtash Sanaeiha and Maryam Moqaddam has won third place in the 2021 Berlinale Competition Audience Award, the organizers announced on Sunday.

“Ballad of a White Cow” is about Mina, a young woman who lives alone with her deaf child while her husband had been executed for a murder charge a year ago. She tries to get her life together, take good care of her child and make both ends meet. However, her life gets more sorrowful when she finds out that her husband was innocent.

Totem Films, a Paris-based international sales and co-production company, has purchased the rights to sell the film in Europe.

Almost all filmmakers invited to the Berlinale Summer Special were able to travel to Berlin to personally present their films to the audience for eleven nights in 16 open-air cinemas of the German capital.

In order to enable even greater audience participation in this festival, the organizers divided the 71st Berlinale into two parts due to COVID-19. 

They also added the Berlinale Competition Audience Award to the traditional Panorama Audience Award this year to acknowledge the place of the audience in the event.

“Mr. Bachmann and His Class” by Maria Speth from Germany took first place in the 2021 Berlinale Competition Audience Award. 

The story of the movie is set in a German city with a complex history of both excluding and integrating foreigners, where a charismatic teacher provides his pupils, who all come from different countries originally, with the key to feeling at home in Germany and becoming citizens of the world.

“I’m Your Man” by the German director Maria Schrader won second prize.

“The Last Forest” by Luiz Bolognesi from Brazil stood in the first place of the Panorama Audience Award, while “Miguel’s War”, a co-production of Lebanon, Germany and Spain by Eliane Raheb and “Genderation” by Monika Treut from Germany took second and third places.

Photo: “Ballad of a White Cow” co-directed by Behtash Sanaeiha and Maryam Moqaddam.

MMS/YAW