BERLIN - Belgian drama The Broken Circle Breakdown and the documentary The Act of Killing have won this year's Panorama Audience Awards at the Berlin International Film Festival.
The Berlin public voted in force for Felix van Groeningen's Broken Circle Breakdown as best fiction film in this year's Panorama line-up. The drama focuses on the love story between two very different people - one a religious realist, the other a romantic atheist - whose love and faith is tested when their daughter is diagnosed with a terminal illness.
The Act of Killing from Texas-born, Denmark-based director Joshua Oppenheimer, is a ground-breaking documentary which sheds light on an almost forgotten atrocity: the state-sponsored mass execution of Indonesian communists and other dissidents following the failed coup of September 1965.
In a brazen move, Oppenheimer has the former death squad bosses - who remain unpunished and unapologetic about their crimes - reenact their killings on screen in their favorite cinema genres. The result so impressed Errol Morris and Werner Herzog that they both came on board as executive producers of the film.
The Broken Circle Breakdown and The Act of Killing will receive their Panorama Audience honors at a ceremony on Sunday.