As Chinese people celebrated the Spring Festival, their most important holiday, good news came from Germany. The Chinese film Tuya's Marriage, directed by Wang Quan'an, won the Golden Bear prize at the 57th Berlin International Film Festival, the highest honor of the event.

The awards ceremony on February 17 took place on the eve of China's Lunar New Year. As he accepted the statuette from Jury President Paul Schrader, Wang said he could not imagine a better New Year gift. "When I started to learn filmmaking, my teacher said that films should show people's dreams, and now the film has made my dreams come true," he said.

This is the first time a Chinese film has won the top prize in the festival since 1993, when Women From the Lake of Scented Souls, directed by Xie Fei, took the honor. It also represents another award that Chinese films have won at prestigious European film festivals in six months, after director Jia Zhangke's Still Life won the Golden Lion prize at the Venice Film Festival last September.

Tuya's Marriage tells of the efforts of Tuya, a Mongolian herdswoman, to find and marry a man who is willing to take care of her disabled ex-husband and two children. In the end, Tuya marries a neighbor whose wife has left him.

This is the fourth film that Wang has directed. Apart from Yu Nan, the lead actress, the other cast members were non-professional.

The story is based on the life of shepherds in north China's Inner Mongolia, and discusses the huge impact that rapid economic development has had on the local people's life and environment.

Wang told reporters after the awards ceremony that it is very important to think about and reflect on something that is being lost, especially during the current economic boom. "If we lose them, we will never get them back," he said.

Although the film tells a story about the shepherds and the industrialization they are facing, Wang said, the situation in the film is actually what all of China is going through. "Perhaps this is the last glimpse of the herders of the Inner Mongolia region," he said. "Ultimately they are going to disappear into cities."

A powerful reminder

Wang said it is important to make Tuya's Marriage not only to show the outside world how a dwindling number of people in China live, but also to remind the Chinese audience about the problems remote parts of their country are facing.

"The film reflects what is happening in Chinese society at the lowest level," the director explained. "It also tells the audience that there is a problem that needs to be addressed."

Wang holds that while an excellent film cannot play a role in resolving problems or providing answers to them, it can at least expose problems and truly reflect real life.

Against the background that some Chinese films are becoming more and more technically complex but lacking in content, Tuya's Marriage drew attention by its unusually realistic and creative style. In contrast to films that try to relate a grand theme or target only a narrow audience, Wang's production succeeds with its realistic plot and acting.

Like other realistic works, Tuya's Marriage does not deliberately create a dramatic atmosphere, but the true life that the film presents is what moves and attracts the audience. It expresses friendship, care among family members and also love, but all these feelings are not unrealistic romance, but real feelings of ordinary people.