Veteran Iranian director Jafar Panahi carried off the top prize at the annual Berlin International Film Festival at the weekend for his Tehran-based road movie Taxi.

He was awarded the Golden Bear for a film described by critics as a victory both for freedom of speech and the art of cinematic storytelling.

Panahi, banned from making films by the Iranian authorities and forbidden from travelling abroad in 2010, delivers a powerful artistic statement and in the process proves that if you know what you want to express, even in the most difficult circumstances, you will find a way of doing so.

Political censure seems to have refreshed Panahi’s directorial style in this idiosyncratic and highly personal film, which paints a fascinating and touching portrait of contemporary Iranian reality.

The film is built around Panahi himself as he listens to his passengers while driving a cab through the busy streets of Tehran.

The conversations are captured by two digital cameras mounted on the dashboard, which though they mainly film inside the car, are occasionally turned around to provide glimpses of what’s happening in the streets outside.

Panahi’s fares argue about everything from capital punishment in Iran to the flourishing black market in illegal videos. Engrossing stuff.

British actors Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling won Silver Bears for their magnificent performances in 45 Years.

Directed by Andrew Haigh, it depicts the relationship between a married couple in the days before a party for their 45th wedding anniversary.

Focusing on how even a bond cemented

over decades can still be threatened by irrational worries and jealousies, it’s a film to treasure.

The grand jury prize went to Chilean director Pablo Larrain’s The Club in which four priests, living in seclusion, are each paying penance for past crimes. Harsh and rough around the edges, it’s a film which fascinates and repels in equal measure.

Jayro Bustamante’s directorial debut Ixcanula won the Silver Bear Alfred Bauer Prize for feature films that “open new perspectives.”

Set on a Guatemalan coffee plantation and told without condescension or cliche, it has undoubted social and political resonance as it depicts the big city — where the bosses and the bureaucrats come from — and the lure of emigration to the US as constant disruptive forces.

The Silver Bear for best director was shared by Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude for Aferim! and Polish director Malgorzata Szumowska for Body.

Jude’s film, set in the 19th century, follows the hunt for a Gypsy slave on the run and in the process sheds new light on the persecution of Romania’s Roma people which continues to this day.

Body tells the story of a widowed coroner and his anorexic daughter who are trying to cope with the tragic death of their wife and mother.

It’s bleakly comic in its exploration of how we deal with death and typifies Szumowska’s penchant for producing off-the-wall narratives.

It was a film typifying the festival, which this year was a qualified success — there were just enough good films in the programme to suggest that world cinema hasn’t yet been totally defeated by “the money.”