Iranian film "There is No Evil" won the Golden Bear award as the 70th Berlin International Film Festival drew to a close on Saturday local time in the German capital. It marks the third time an Iranian film took home Berlin's top prize in the past decade, following Jafar Panahi's "Taxi" in 2015 and Asghar Farhadi's "A Separation" in 2011. 

In four separate stories, the film asks at what extent there is freedom for individuals under an autocratic regime. Director Mohammad Rasoulof, who shot the film in secret, uses the film to criticize the government policy of executing dissidents.  

The director was prevented from attending the ceremony, since he is banned from leaving Iran. He is also banned from working as a director. His daughter Baran Rasoulof, who also plays a role in the film, received the honor on his behalf. 

"The story reminds us that there are no walls in this world that can stop the power of imagination, the power of ideas, belief and love," said producer Kaveh Farnam of the film at the Saturday's ceremony.

For other awards, the seven-person jury spread the prizes far and wide, with no single filmmaker dominating the awards.

South Korean director Hong Sang Soo snapped up the Silver Bear for Best Director with "The Woman Who Ran," becoming the second director in South Korea to win the award in Berlinale history. The minimalist movie, which premiered at the festival earlier this week, tells the story of a woman who meets three friends from her past while her husband is away on a business trip.

Italian actor Elio Germano won the Best Actor award for his performance in the impressionistic biopic "Hidden Away." Best Actress award went to German artist Paula Beer for "Undine," a modern-day retelling of an ancient love story and myth about a water nymph. American writer-director Eliza Hittman won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize for "Never Rarely Sometimes Always," a story about teen pregnancy.

This year's Berlin International Film Festival marks the first under new leadership team of artistic director Carlo Chatrian and executive director Mariette Rissenbeek. This year, Berlin awarded prizes for its inaugural Encounters section, a sidebar meant to "support new voices in cinema and to give more room to diverse narrative and documentary forms in the official program."

U.S.-Swedish-Japanese-UK co-production "The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin)" won The Encounters Award for Best Film.

(Images by Jia Jieqiong)