La Mif (The Fam), a coming-of-age drama from Swiss director Fred Bailif, has won the top prize for best film in the Generation 14Plus sidebar of the 2021 Berlin International Film Festival.
Bailif’s fictional look inside a residential care facility housing teenage girls “pulls you in, never lets you go, and hits straight to the heart,” according to the Generation jury.
The jury gave a special mention in the 14Plus category to Dash Shaw’s psychedelic animated feature Cryptozoo, which premiered in Sundance. The jury called the movie, an action thriller about the fight to save a utopian sanctuary for mythological creatures, “a mind-blowing, disturbing and visionary trip.”
In the Generation KPlus section, featuring films targeting younger audiences, the jury awarded its best film honor to Chinese drama Summer Blur from director Han Shaui. The movie tells the story of a young girl sent to live with her Aunt in Wuhan while her recently re-married mother builds a new home in Shanghai.
Betania Cappato’s A School in Cerro Hueso, a documentary from Argentina, which follows a six-year-old girl diagnosed on the autism spectrum as she first attends school in a small rural classroom, received a special mention from the jury in the Generation KPlus category.
