‘Yellow Letters’ Wins the Berlinale’s Golden Bear, the First for a German Filmmaker in 22 Years

A film about an artist couple under pressure from their government won the prize at a festival that spent its 76th edition arguing about whether cinema should talk about politics. İlker Çatak’s Yellow Letters took the Golden Bear for Best Film at the Berlin International Film Festival on Saturday (Feb. 21), the first time in 22 years a German filmmaker has won the festival’s top award, after Fatih Akin’s Head-On in 2004, per Variety.

The film follows Derya (Özgü Namal) and Aziz (Tansu Biçer), Turkish theater artists who lose their jobs and their home when the authoritarian government targets them. It is set in Ankara and Istanbul but shot entirely in Germany with no effort to hide it, which The Hollywood Reporter reads as a hint that what happens in Ankara can happen in Berlin. Çatak’s previous film, The Teachers’ Lounge, was nominated for an Oscar for Best International Feature.

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Jury president Wim Wenders presented the prize with a pointed description. Screen Daily has his words:

This is a movie that speaks up very clearly about the political language of totalitarianism as opposed to the empathetic language of cinema,

Wim Wenders, Screen Daily

“Yellow Letters” (Official Trailer) | Berlinale Competition 2026Berlinale - Berlin International Film Festival · Watch on YouTube ↗

Çatak, per Variety, said he had prepared a political speech and chose to hand the stage to his collaborators instead: “I think the film speaks for itself in its political message, or questions rather.”

The rest of the winners

Sandra Hüller won the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance as a woman passing as a man in 17th-century Germany in Markus Schleinzer’s Rose, her second Silver Bear, 20 years after Requiem. Emin Alper’s Salvation won the Grand Jury Prize, Lance Hammer’s Queen at Sea won the Jury Prize and a shared Best Supporting Performance for Anna Calder-Marshall and Tom Courtenay, and Grant Gee won Best Director for Everybody Digs Bill Evans, a bio-drama of the jazz pianist starring Anders Danielsen Lie.

A festival defined by its argument

This Berlinale began with a controversy. After Wenders said in an opening press conference that filmmakers should “stay out of politics,” in response to a question about Gaza, the backlash followed him through the festival. The closing ceremony became its answer: festival director Tricia Tuttle called the festival’s mood “raw and fractured,” Wenders read a prepared statement of nearly seven minutes that Screen Daily called unprecedented for a closing ceremony, and several winners used their speeches to criticize Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and, in one case, the German government’s response, according to Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter.

Variety notes the jury leaned toward overtly political films, and that second-place Grand Jury Prize for Salvation went to another Turkey-set drama. Hüller’s next stops are Hollywood ones: The Hollywood Reporter says she is about to appear opposite Tom Cruise in Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Digger and with Ryan Gosling in Project Hail Mary, which opened a month later. Our February guide has more of the month’s viewing.

Added to the High Grailed archive on October 12, 2026.