The jury at the Berlin Film Festival has given its top prize, the Golden Bear, to the Chinese film Black Coal, Thin Ice. The director Diao Yinan told the audience “It’s really hard to believe this dream has come true.”

The film also won the festival’s best actor prize for Liao Fan. Haru Kuroki, from Japan, won the best actress prize for The Little House.

The American auteur Richard Linklater was named the best director in Berlin, for his coming-of-age film Boyhood, which follows the same actors over a twelve year span.

The first of about four hundred films at the festival, Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, took the second prize, the Silver Bear.

The eight-person jury was headed by James Schamus, who’s best-known for producing Brokeback Mountain and a number of films by Ang Lee.

The festival also gave the British director Ken Loach an Honorary Golden Bear to recognise his career making socially aware dramas.