[2010.02.22] WANG QUAN'AN's APART TOGETHER WINS SILVER BEAR

courtesy of takungpao.com

The 60th Berlin Film Festival award ceremony took place on the 20th. The Wang Quan'an and Jin Na written APART TOGETHER won the film festival's Best Screenplay Silver Bear prize.

That night, the jury and Chinese actress Yu Nan announced the Best Screenplay winner and presented the award to Wang Quan'an. She said, "I feel this world is very small, we can go our separate ways in one place and can run into each other in the same place."

Wang Quan'an was slightly teary eyed when he received the award. After a brief embrace with Yu Nan, he said to the audience, "At first when I received the Film Festival chair's invitation, he only said that this film was very suitable for the opening ceremony atmosphere......the Berlin Film Festival is the film festival with the coldest weather that I have experienced, but the warmest inside the cinemas."

This award made Wang Quan'an after Xie Fei and Zhang Yimou the third Chinese director to win the Golden Bear and the Silver Bear prize at the Berlin Film Festival.

APART TOGETHER is a story about a war torn family, which is not rare around the world. Wang Quan'an said, "Berlin also suffered such pain, thus if this film will be released here, I hope Mr. Chairman will be able to help me fulfill one matter -- to add the following in the film's opening, 'For the city of Berlin'."

At the award press conference, Wang Quan'an said, "I truly never imagined that I would win. this Silver Bear prize's biggest different is it is a screenplay award. As a director, I have always advocated for directors to write screenplays. I myself have written many scripts."

APART TOGETHER is based on a real story. A retired Taiwan veteran in the twilight of his life returns to his hometown Shanghai to find his long life lover and bring her back to Taiwan. Years later, his sudden appearance shatters the originally quiet of lives of this woman and her current husband. Although her Shanghai husband agreed to both returning to Taiwan together, but inside he could not peacefully face the parting. The aging wife also falls into a struggle between love, family and gratitude. With one history, two relationships and three seniors, APART TOGETHER uses a gentle and calm camera language to interpret a family story that is full of Eastern colors.

The Berlin Film Festival's official collaborating media, famous film magazine HOLLYWOOD REPORTER said about APART TOGETHER, "Small in scope but tightly structured, gracefully acted and directed, it opens up deep historical wounds and generational traumas created by China's civil war, but does not press on them, exploring instead more universal human dilemmas lightened by scrumptious culinary episodes."

In addition, Taiwan film AU REVOIR, TAIPEI won the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema (NETPAC) Prize at the Berlin Film Festival as well.