Elsewhere, 'Mogul Mowgli' starring Riz Ahmed took the FIPRESCI prize for the best film in the Panorama sidebar.
Undine, the latest drama from prolific German auteur Christian Petzold (Transit, Barbara), won over the FIPRESCI group of international film critics at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival, who voted it the best film of the event's competition section.
Undine is a 21st century retelling of the myth of a water nymph who has to kill her lover should he ever betray her. It features Paula Beer — whose performance earned her a best actress Silver Bear — and Franz Rogowski, the stars of Petzold's 2018 drama Transit.
The FIPRESCI prize for the best film in Berlin's Panorama sidebar went to Mogul Mowgli, the Brit-set hip-hop drama directed by Bassam Tariq and co-written and starring Riz Ahmed as an aspiring rapper facing a life-or-death crisis. Charades, Paris is handling world sales on the film.
Guillaume Brac's French road-trip romantic comedy A l’abordage, also in Panorama, received a special mention from the FIPRESCI jury.
The Metamorphosis of Birds, an intimate documentary from Portuguese director Catarina Vasconcelos about her family history, won the FIPRESCI prize for the best film in Berlin's new Encounters section.
Matthew Rankin's The Twentieth Century, a satirical biopic of William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canada's longest-serving prime minister who had an obsession with the occult, worn shoes, his authoritarian mother and anti-masturbation therapies, received the FIPRESCI honor for best film in the Forum section, while Ouvertures, an experimental documentary from theater group The Living and The Dead Ensemble in which they perform a play about the Haitian revolution in in Port-au-Prince, received a special mention.
