Keep The Lights On Takes Top LGBT Honors At Berlin Film Festival

Congratulations to director Ira Sachs, who last night received one of LGBT film’s top honors—the Berlin Film Festival’s Teddy Award for Feature Film—for his gay romance movie Keep The Lights On.

Queerty reviewed the film back in January when it premiered at Sundance and chatted with Sachs (middle) and lead actor Zachary Booth (right) in the video interview below.

At the Berlin Film Festival, Sachs was joined by film’s lead actors, Thure Lindhardt (left) and Booth in accepting the award. It’s an interesting work of self-fulfilling cinematic prophesy that Lindhardt’s character (a documentary maker) wins a Teddy Award in Lights, especially considering that Lindhardt is the semi-autobiographical representation of Sachs.

“The film etches an intimate portrait of the difficulties in building relationships that are loving, supportive and truthful,” the Teddy jury said in their statement about the movie, “Delicately balancing acute observations and cinematic mastery, the film brings alive universal themes with unique breadth of vision.”

Past Teddy Award recipients include Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are Alright, John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig and the Angry Itch, and Pedro Almodovar’s Law of Desire.