Who Will Win Berlin’s Golden Bear?

The awards ceremony for the 74th Berlin International Film Festival kicks off Saturday night, where this year’s jury, headed by 12 Years a Slave and Black Panther actress Lupita Nyong’o, will hand out the coveted Gold and Silver Bears.

Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha’s Iranian drama My Favourite Cake is being given good odds for an award this year. The drama, about a 70-year-old widow and her tentative attempts at romance with an age-appropriate taxi driver, was a critical fave. A win for the film would also send a political message after the Iranian government banned the directors from attending Berlin. If the jury picks out Cake for the Golden Bear it would be the third time in 10 years —following Jafar Panahi’s Taxi (2015) and There Is No Evil (2020) from Mohammad Rasoulof —that Berlin has given its top honor to Iranian directors in absentia. World sales for My Favourite Cake are with Totem Films.

More from The Hollywood Reporter

• Script to Scene: 'The Holdovers' Screenwriter David Hemingson on Bringing Humor to Melancholy Moments

• 'Anatomy of a Fall' Producer David Thion Details Obstacles to Getting the Film From Script to Screen: "It Was a Really Long Process"

• Script to Scene: 'Barbie' Screenwriters Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach Break Down a Climactic Moment

Claire Burger’s Langue Étrangère, a romance drama between two teenage girls —one French, one German—is another awards frontrunner, with young leads Lilith Grasmug and Josefa Heinsius considered strong prospects for Berlin’s gender-neutral best performance honor. Goodfellas is handling sales.

Oppenheimer star Cillian Murphy could add a Silver Bear to his trophy case if the jury goes for his still and somber performance in Tim Mielants’ Small Things Like These, as a man in 1980s Ireland who sees horrific abuse of women by the Catholic Church and struggles with his conscience to do the right thing. FilmNation is selling the film worldwide.

Hong Sangsoo, a regular on the Berlinale award stage — he won back-to-back-to-back Silver Bears in 2020 (The Woman Who Ran), 2021 (Introduction) and 2022 (The Novelist’s Film) — could complete the quartet with his latest, A Traveler’s Needs, his third collaboration with French star Isabelle Huppert, following In Another Country (2012) and Claire’s Camera (2017). Finecut is selling A Traveler’s Needs internationally.

The German contender given the best odds of Golden Bear success is Matthias Glasner’s Sterben (Dying), a powerful, three-hour melodrama, but moving and laugh-out-loud funny, centered on a German conductor (Lars Eidinger) and his extremely dysfunctional family. The film could be the first German movie to win Berlin’s top prize since Fatih Akin’s Head-On in 2004.

The Devil’s Bath, an Austrian horror film from Goodnight Mommy directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, which Playtime is selling worldwide, could be too gory for the Berlin jury, but the psychodrama about a woman driven to extremes in the 18th century rural Austria, won over Berlin audiences. Shudder has already picked up rights in North America.

Two of the last eight Golden Bear winners have been documentaries (Nicolas Philibert’s On the Adamant last year and Gianfranco Rosi’s Fire at Sea in 2016) and a pair of docs this year are being given solid chances at the awards. There’s Mati Diop’s Dahomey, an examination of the issues raised by the return of plundered art to Africa, which Mubi picked up from Les Films du Losange for North America and other territories ahead of Saturday’s award ceremony. And Architecton from Russian director Victor Kossakovsky, sold by The Match Factory worldwide, uses stunning imagery to look at the world of stone and concrete, the natural and the built environment, and how they crumble down and are built anew.

A possible dark horse for the Golden Bear is Pepe from Dominican filmmaker Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias. The unclassifiable mash-up of documentary and fiction is narrated by a hippo brought to Columbia by drug king Pablo Escobar in a dreamy contemplation of nature, cultural dislocation and megaherbivore feeding patterns.

Also up for the top honors in Berlin are:

• The kitchen drama La Cocina from director Alonso Ruizpalacios starring Rooney Mara and Raúl Briones, which HanWay Films is handling internationally

• Piero Messina’s sci-fi drama Another End with Gael García Bernal, Renate Reinsve, Bérénice Bejo and Olivia Williams, being sold worldwide by Newen Connect

• Gustav Möller’s Sons, a prison-set thriller from the Danish director of The Guilty (2018), which is being sold worldwide by Les Films du Losange

• Black Tea, the first feature from Abderrahmane Sissako since 2014’s Timbuktu, which Gaumont is selling

• Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man, starring Sebastian Stan, Renate Reinsve and Adam Pearson, which was produced and is being sold worldwide by A24

• Margherita Vicario’s Gloria!, sales of which are being handled by Rai Cinema International

• Bruno Dumont’s sci-fi spoof L’ Empire, which Memento International is selling

• Olivier Assayas’ COVID-era drama Suspended Time, being handled by Playtime worldwide

• Andreas Dresen’s German period drama From Hilde, With Love, starring Babylon Berlin actress Liv Lisa Fries as Nazi resistance fighter Hilde Coppi, from sales group Beta Cinema

• Who Do I Belong To, from Tunisian director Meryam Joobeur, which Luxbox is selling

• Min Bahadur Bham’s Shambhala, the first Nepalese film in Berlin competition, being sold worldwide by Best Friend Forever

The awards ceremony for the 74th Berlinale kicks off at 930 a.m. PT / 12:30 p.m. ET / 6:30 p.m. in Berlin on Saturday. You can watch the gala live on the Berlinale website or the festival’s YouTube channel.

Best of The Hollywood Reporter

• Most Anticipated Movie Releases of 2024

• ‘The Lord of the Rings’ Trilogy Cast, Then and Now

• Eight Actors Who Have Played Willy Wonka in Films and on Broadway