Kenyan-Mexican Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o, the first black jury president at the 74th annual event, announced the seven-member panel’s choice among 20 contenders for the Golden Bear award at a gala ceremony.
Diop said the prize “not only honours me but the entire visible and invisible community that the film represents.
“To rebuild we must first restitute, and what does restitution mean? To restitute is to do justice,” she added.
South Korean arthouse favourite Hong Sang-soo captured the runner-up Grand Jury Prize for “A Traveller’s Needs”, his third collaboration with French screen legend Isabelle Huppert.
Hong, a frequent guest at the 11-day festival, thanked the jury, joking “I don’t know what you saw in this film”.
French auteur Bruno Dumont accepted the third-place Jury Prize for “The Empire”, an intergalactic battle of good and evil set in a French fishing village.
Dominican filmmaker Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias won best director for “Pepe”, his enigmatic docudrama conjuring the ghost of a hippopotamus owned by the late Colombian drug baron Pablo Escobar.