Berlin Film Festival 2014: Bai Ri Yan Huo wins Golden Bear for best picture

Chinese thriller Bai Ri Yan Huo (Black Coal, Thin Ice) has won the Golden Bear for best picture at this year’s Berlin Film Festival.

Liao Fan won the prize for best actor in the same film, while Haru Kuroki won best actress for her role in the Japanese movie Chiisai Ouchi (The Little House).

American Richard Linklater was named best director for his film Boyhood.

An eight-person jury decides the awards.

This year it was headed by American director and producer James Schamus, probably most well-known for producing Brokeback Mountain.

Bai Ri Yan Huo features an overweight detective, played by Liao Fan, on the trail of a serial killer.

Richard Linklater’s ambitious coming-of-age film Boyhood used the same child actors over a 12-year span.

Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel, the festival opener, took the Silver Bear grand jury prize, while the Ethiopian film Difret, based on a real case of bride abduction in Ethiopia, took the audience award.

Berlin Film Festival is one of the oldest and most prestigious film showcases in the world, but this year some critics complained of a dearth of strong entries, and a lack of films with strong political or social agendas.

Some 400 films have been screened during the 11-day festival, 23 of them in the competition category.

In 2013, the main prize was awarded to the Romanian film Child’s Pose.