Paradise Backdrops Turn Prison Walls Into Fantasy Escapes

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In Reversal, Florida to Take Health Law’s Medicaid Expansion

MIAMI — Gov. Rick Scott of Florida reversed himself on Wednesday and announced that he would expand his state’s Medicaid program to cover the poor, becoming the latest — and, perhaps, most prominent — Republican critic of President Obama’s health care law to decide to put it into effect.

It was an about-face for Mr. Scott, a former businessman who entered politics as a critic of Mr. Obama’s health care proposals. Florida was one of the states that sued to try to block the law. After the Supreme Court ruled last year that though the law was constitutional, states could choose not to expand their Medicaid programs to cover the poor, Mr. Scott said that Florida would not expand its programs.

Mr. Scott said Wednesday that he now supported a three-year expansion of Medicaid, through the period that the federal government has agreed to pay the full cost of the expansion, and before some of the costs are shifted to the states.

“While the federal government is committed to paying 100 percent of the cost, I cannot in good conscience deny Floridians that needed access to health care,” Mr. Scott said at a news conference. “We will support a three-year expansion of the Medicaid program under the new health care law as long as the federal government meets their commitment to pay 100 percent of the cost during that time.”

He said there were “no perfect options” when it came to the Medicaid expansion. “To be clear: our options are either having Floridians pay to fund this program in other states while denying health care to our citizens,” he said, “or using federal funding to help some of the poorest in our state with the Medicaid program as we explore other health care reforms.”

Mr. Scott said the state would not create its own insurance exchange to comply with another provision of the law.

His reversal sent ripples through the nation, especially given the change in tone and substance since the summer, when he said he would not create an exchange or expand Medicaid.

“Floridians are interested in jobs and economic growth, a quality education for their children, and keeping the cost of living low,” Mr. Scott said in a statement at the time. “Neither of these major provisions in Obamacare will achieve those goals, and since Florida is legally allowed to opt out, that’s the right decision for our citizens.”

Mr. Scott now joins the Republican governors of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota and Ohio, who have decided to join the Medicaid expansion. Some, like Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona, were also staunch opponents of Mr. Obama’s overall health care law.

Shortly before his announcement, the governor received word from the federal government that it planned to grant Florida the final waiver needed to privatize Medicaid, a process the state initially undertook as a pilot project. Mr. Scott, who is running for re-election next year, has heavily lobbied for the waiver, arguing that Florida could not expand Medicaid without it.

Mr. Scott’s support of Medicaid expansion is significant, but is far from the last word. The program requires approval from Florida’s Republican-dominated Legislature, which has been averse to expanding Medicaid under the health care law. The Legislature’s two top Republican leaders said that before making a decision they would consider recommendations from a select committee, which has been asked to review the state’s options.

“The Florida Legislature will make the ultimate decision,” Will Weatherford, the state House speaker, said. “I am personally skeptical that this inflexible law will improve the quality of health care in our state and ensure our long-term financial stability.”

Medicaid, which covers three million people in Florida, costs the state $21 billion a year. The expansion would extend coverage to one million more people.

Mr. Scott’s reversal is sure to anger his original conservative supporters.

The governor “was elected because of his principled conservative leadership against Obamacare’s overreach,” said Slade O’Brien, state director for Americans for Prosperity, an influential conservative advocacy organization. “Hopefully our legislative leaders will not follow in Governor Scott’s footsteps, and will reject expansion.”

During his announcement on Wednesday, Mr. Scott said his mother’s recent death and her lifetime struggle to raise five children “with very little money” played a role in his decision.

“Losing someone so close to you puts everything in a new perspective, especially the big decisions,” he said.

Michael Cooper contributed reporting from New York.

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DealBook: Office Supply Rivals' Merger Leaked by a Wayward Report

8:56 p.m. | Updated

It was a paragraph buried on Page 4 of an earnings release, under the heading of “other matters.” Yet what those four sentences revealed sent bankers and lawyers who had been working all night on a deal scrambling early Wednesday morning.

The earnings release, from the office supplies chain Office Depot, appeared shortly after 7 a.m. and inadvertently disclosed the terms of a long-awaited merger between the company and OfficeMax. The announcement disappeared from the company’s Web site quickly, but not before a gaggle of news outlets began running full-fledged reports about the deal.

At that time, bankers and lawyers for the two companies were still negotiating the final language of the merger agreement. The mistaken early publication of the release — since blamed on the data provider Thomson Reuters — prompted Office Depot’s chief executive, Neil R. Austrian, to call up his counterpart at OfficeMax, Ravi K. Saligram, and apologize.

More than two hours later, the companies formally announced their combination.

The episode recalls other times that major company news was published prematurely. Last fall, Google’s third-quarter earnings were published three hours early; the technology giant blamed R. R. Donnelley & Sons, its filings agent, for the mistake.

The chief executives played down the inadvertent disclosure as a harmless mistake, since the announcement was scheduled before the markets opened anyway.

“When two big Fortune 500 companies merge, occasionally mishaps happen,” Mr. Saligram said in an interview.

And Thomson Reuters apologized in a statement, saying it regretted the error and would take steps to prevent such a mistake from happening again.

But people involved in the deal privately bemoaned the unexpectedly bumpy ride, which knocked off kilter a carefully choreographed announcement meant to emphasize what they called a transformative merger of equals.

The union will combine two of the big retailers of staples and notepads, a major effort to combat years of losing sales to bigger, nimbler rivals. Both chief executives said that combining their companies could yield $400 million to $600 million in cost savings. It will probably lead to significant job cuts, as the companies seek to shrink their combined footprint of over 2,500 stores.

Both companies disclosed big drops in their sales for the fourth quarter on Wednesday: Office Depot’s revenue slipped 12 percent from the year-ago period, to $2.6 billion, while OfficeMax’s fell 7.4 percent, to $1.7 billion.

And both have also been under pressure from investors. Office Depot is fending off Starboard Value, an activist hedge fund that holds a 14.8 percent stake and has called for a major change in strategy. And OfficeMax has contended with Neuberger Berman, an investor with a 5 percent stake that has called for bigger payouts to shareholders.

“The whole industry and every analyst thought this made sense,” Mr. Austrian said in an interview. “The timing was right at this point in time.”

Shares of Office Depot fell 16.7 percent on Wednesday, to $4.18, while those of OfficeMax slid 7 percent, to $12.09. The decline wiped out some of the gains both stocks enjoyed after word of the deal talks emerged on Monday.

Negotiations have been held in earnest since at least last summer, people briefed on the matter said.

One important negotiating point that was resolved early on was ensuring that the deal could be presented as a “merger of equals.” Though Office Depot is paying a premium for OfficeMax — it is issuing 2.69 new shares for each share of the target, valuing the smaller retailer at about $1.2 billion as of Tuesday’s closing prices — neither company’s chief has a lock as the leader of the combined company.

Indeed, both Mr. Austrian and Mr. Saligram will remain in place while board members from each company run a search for a new chief executive, which could be either man. Also undecided: the new company’s name and whether it will have its headquarters in Office Depot’s home of Boca Raton, Fla., or OfficeMax’s base in Naperville, Ill.

People involved in the deal said that the compromise, which took about two months to complete, was important in bringing both companies to the negotiating table.

“We both put our egos aside,” Mr. Austrian of Office Depot said. “It’s not a win for one side and a loss for another.”

Both Office Depot and OfficeMax also wanted to emphasize that they would remain competitors until the deal was approved by shareholders and antitrust regulators. That is a nod to the collapse of a proposed merger of Office Depot and Staples more than a decade ago, which was blocked on anticompetitive grounds and left Office Depot reeling for years.

Mr. Saligram of OfficeMax argued on a call with analysts that the regulatory environment has shifted since. Both companies have lost ground not only to Staples, but also to online outlets like Amazon.com and bulk retailers like Target and Wal-Mart Stores.

“This industry has completely changed,” he said.

Should the deal fall apart because of antitrust concerns, neither company will be liable for a termination fee, executives said on the analyst call.

Company executives and advisers also spent significant amounts of time negotiating with BC Partners, an investment firm that owns the equivalent of 22 percent of Office Depot’s stock. Under the terms of Wednesday’s deal, BC Partners will own no more than 5 percent of the combined company’s voting shares and will have no representatives on its board.

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At least 16 hurt in blast and fire at Kansas City restaurant

At least 16 people were hurt and a popular wine bar was destroyed by an apparent natural gas explosion and ensuing fire at an upscale shopping district in Kansas City, Mo., Tuesday evening.

Residents reported smelling natural gas and seeing utility crews in the area before the conflagration. A strong scent of gas hung in the air afterward.

“Early indications are that a contractor doing underground work struck a natural gas line, but the investigation continues,” Missouri Gas Energy, a natural-gas provider, said in a statement.

The Kansas City Fire Department said the incident was under investigation. “It does seem to be an accident,” Fire Chief Paul Berardi said during a late-night news briefing.

JJ's Restaurant and wine bar, just off Country Club Plaza, had apparently been partially evacuated before the blast occurred about 6 p.m.

"This was happy hour at the restaurant. There were patrons in the restaurant," Berardi said.

No fatalities were reported, but officials brought in cadaver dogs to check the rubble. The Kansas City Star reported that one JJ's employee was missing.

The fire raged for two hours, with thick smoke visible for miles. Victims streamed to hospitals; at least four people were in critical condition.

Initially, police said a car had hit a gas main, but officials later discounted that explanation.

Witnesses described a chaotic scene. 

"I was sitting in my living room folding laundry, and felt in my chest -- and heard -- an explosion," said Jamie Lawless, who lives about two blocks from JJ's. "I started freaking out, and I was looking around, and then I saw other people walking outside. You could see giant black smoke billowing up from the plaza area, and nobody really knew what it was."

Sally McVey, who lives across the street from JJ's, said the fire "was growing exponentially, incredibly quickly. It was not like a fire I’ve seen before, where it takes a long time to spread.”

A crowd gathered to watch firefighters battle the blaze. At an apartment building on JJ's block, a woman on a top-floor balcony called down to onlookers.  "'Is my building on fire?' and everybody says, 'Yes, come down!' " McVey said. "She’s like, 'Oh my gosh,' and a lot of people come out of that building with their computers and dogs. She did too.”

JJ's owner, Jimmy Frantze, was out of town, said Kansas City Mayor Sly James, who used to be a fixture at the restaurant. The business, which boasted a selection of 1,800 bottles, had been on the site for 28 years.

“It was 28 years of a great restaurant, and then it has to end like this,” Frantze told the Kansas City Star while driving back from Oklahoma. “I want to make sure to check on my employees to make sure they are all right.”

Kansas City Police Department's bomb squad and officials with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were expected to investigate the accident after the search dogs finished looking for victims, Berardi said.

 matt.pearce@latimes.com

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Secret Lives of Wild Animals Captured by 1 Million Camera-Trap Images

Thanks to motion-triggered digital camera traps, scientists have a powerful tool for studying reclusive animals in remote, inaccessible areas -- and also for generating animated .gifs of gorillas scratching their stomachs.

Okay, scratching gorillas aren't the point of camera-trap research. But they're a very fun byproduct, along with up-close-and-personal photographs of animals glimpsed in unguarded moments.

The jaguar above, filmed in Peru's Manu National Park, represents the 1 millionth image gathered by camera traps belonging to the Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring Network. Managed by Conservation International, the network has deployed camera traps across 16 sites in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

At each site, the traps collect up to 60,000 images every year, a data deluge that's led to new statistical methods for turning aggregated photos into rigorous assessments of regional species health and biodiversity trends, or what they call an early-warning system for nature. The researchers hope camera traps will provide near-real-time feedback of changes that would otherwise take years or decades to quantify.

On the following pages, Wired takes a tour of our favorite photos and animations from the project.

Above:

Manu National Park, Peru.

All images courtesy of the TEAM Network

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The New Old Age Blog: The Reluctant Caregiver

Now and then, I refer to the people that caregivers tend to as “loved ones.” And whenever I do, a woman in Southern California tells me, I set her teeth on edge.

She visits her mother-in-law, runs errands, helps with the paperwork — all tasks she has shouldered with a grim sense of duty.  She doesn’t have much affection for this increasingly frail 90something or enjoy her company; her efforts bring no emotional reward. Her husband, an only child, feels nearly as detached. His mother wasn’t abusive, a completely different scenario, but they were never very close.

Ms. A., as I’ll call her because her mother-in-law reads The Times on her computer, feels miserable about this. “She says she appreciates us, she’s counting on us. She thanks us,” Ms. A. said of her non-loved one. “It makes me feel worse, because I feel guilty.”

She has performed many services for her mother-in-law, who lives in a retirement community, “but I really didn’t want to. I know how grudging it was.”

Call her the Reluctant Caregiver. She and her husband didn’t invite his parents to follow them to the small city where they settled to take jobs. The elders did anyway, and as long as they stayed healthy and active, both couples maintained their own lives. Now that her mother-in-law is widowed and needy, Ms. A feels trapped.

Ashamed, too. She knows lots of adult children work much harder at caregiving yet see it as a privilege. For her, it is mere drudgery. “I don’t feel there’s anybody I can say that to,” she told me — except a friend in Phoenix and, anonymously, to us.

The friend, therapist Randy Weiss, has served as both a reluctant caregiver to her mother, who died very recently at 86, and a willing caregiver to her childless aunt, living in an assisted living dementia unit at 82. Spending time with each of them made Ms. Weiss conscious of the distinction.

Her visits involved many of the same activities, “but it feels very different,” she said. “I feel the appreciation from my aunt, even if she’s much less able to verbalize it.” A cherished confidante since adolescence, her aunt breaks into smiles when Ms. Weiss arrives and exclaims over every small gift, even a doughnut. She worked in the music industry for decades and, despite her memory loss, happily sings along with the jazz CDs Ms. Weiss brings.

Because she had no such connection with her mother, whom Ms. Weiss described as distant and critical, “it’s harder to do what I have to do,” she said. (We spoke before her mother’s death.) “One is an obligation I fulfill out of duty. One is done with love.”

Unlike her friend Ms. A, “I don’t feel guilty that I don’t feel warmly towards my mother,” Ms. Weiss said. “I’ve made my peace.”

Let’s acknowledge that at times almost every caregiver knows exhaustion, anger and resentment.  But to me, reluctant caregivers probably deserve more credit than most. They are not getting any of the good stuff back, no warmth or laughter, little tenderness, sometimes not even gratitude.

Yet they are doing this tough work anyway, usually because no one else can or will. Maybe an early death or a divorce means that the person who would ordinarily have provided care can’t. Or maybe the reluctant caregiver is simply the one who can’t walk away.

“It’s important to acknowledge that every relationship doesn’t come from ‘The Cosby Show,’” said Barbara Moscowitz when I called to ask her about reluctance. Ms. Moscowitz, a senior geriatric social worker at Massachusetts General Hospital, has heard many such tales from caregivers in her clinical practice and support groups.

“We need to allow people to be reluctant,” she said. “It means they’re dutiful; they’re responsible. Those are admirable qualities.”

Yet, she recognizes, “they feel oppressed by the platitudes. ‘Your mother is so lucky to have you!’” Such praise just makes people like Ms. A. squirm.

Ms. Moscowitz also worries about reluctant caregivers, and urges them to find support groups where they can say the supposedly unsay-able, and to sign up early for community services — hotlines, senior centers, day programs, meals on wheels — that can help lighten the load.

“Caregiving only goes one way – it gets harder, more complex,” she said. “Support groups and community resources are like having a first aid kit. It’s going to feel like even more of a burden, and you need to be armed.”

I wonder, too, if reluctant caregivers have a romanticized view of what the task is like for everyone else. Elder care can be a wonderful experience, satisfying and meaningful, but guilt and resentment are also standard parts of the job description, at least occasionally.

For a reluctant caregiver, “the satisfaction is, you haven’t turned your back,” Ms. Moscowitz said. “You can take pride in that.”

---

Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

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DealBook: Court Gives Investor an Edge in a Lawsuit Against Apple

7:47 p.m. | Updated

In the battle between Apple and the hedge fund manager David Einhorn, score a point for the billionaire who is taking up the mantle of shareholder advocate.

A federal judge said on Tuesday that he was leaning toward Mr. Einhorn’s contention that Apple had violated securities regulations by bundling several shareholder proposals into one matter.

A lawsuit by Mr. Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital, filed this month in Federal District Court in Manhattan, argues that Apple improperly grouped a vote to eliminate the company’s ability to issue preferred stock at will with other initiatives that Mr. Einhorn supports.

While the judge overseeing the case, Richard J. Sullivan, did not immediately grant Mr. Einhorn’s request for a halt to the vote, he said that the facts of the case favored the investor’s interpretation.

“I think success on the merits lies with Greenlight,” Judge Sullivan said at the end of a nearly two-hour hearing. Earlier in the hearing, he implied that he believed Securities and Exchange Commission rules prohibited the bundling of disparate shareholder initiatives.

Spokesmen for Greenlight and Apple declined to comment after the hearing.

Though a small point in the skirmish between Apple and Mr. Einhorn, the judge’s comments may provide some ballast to the hedge fund manager’s call to other investors. Mr. Einhorn’s bigger goal is to persuade Apple to return some of its $137 billion cash trove to shareholders.

He has asked Apple to issue preferred shares, which would pay out billions of dollars in dividends over time. His lawsuit revolves around the technology giant’s proposal to eliminate “blank check” preferred shares that the company can issue without a shareholder vote. He argues that the company improperly bundled the plan with two other corporate governance changes that he supports.

Apple has said that it will consider Mr. Einhorn’s request, but that it has no plans to amend the shareholder proposal.

Judge Sullivan is expected to decide within days whether to grant a preliminary injunction, given the Feb. 27 cutoff for voting on Apple’s shareholder proposals.

A lawyer for Mr. Einhorn, Mitchell P. Hurley of the firm Akin Gump, argued during Tuesday’s hearing that his client would suffer “irreparable harm” if the vote were allowed to proceed, because he would be forced to vote against two matters he would ordinarily support.

During questioning, however, Judge Sullivan expressed skepticism about the need to take immediate action.

A lawyer for Apple, George Riley of O’Melveny & Myers, said in court that if shareholders approved the disputed initiative, the company would wait for the judge to rule before adopting the new measures in its corporate charter.

Judge Sullivan also questioned why Mr. Einhorn had waited so long to act. He filed suit on Feb. 6, over a month after Apple first disclosed its shareholder proxy.

A version of this article appeared in print on 02/20/2013, on page B2 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Court Gives Investor an Edge In a Lawsuit Against Apple.

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Obama ramps up pressure on GOP to avert budget cuts

WASHINGTON -- With less than two weeks before across-the-board spending cuts begin taking effect, President Obama is cranking up pressure on congressional Republicans to agree to a Democratic plan that would temporarily block the deep reductions.

Obama is scheduled to speak Tuesday on the need to prevent the cuts, known in Washington as a sequester, appearing at a White House event with first responders -- people whose jobs might be lost if the federal government slashes budgets as scheduled on March 1, according to a White House official.

The president plans to endorse a Democratic plan that would replace the across-the-board cuts with more targeted reductions, as well as new taxes on some people making more than $1 million.

"The president will challenge Republicans to make a very simple choice: do they protect investments in education, health care and national defense or do they continue to prioritize and protect tax loopholes that benefit the very few at the expense of middle and working class Americans?" said the official, who would not be named discussing the plans.

Obama's event will be the latest step in his public campaign to cast his Republican opponents as standing in the way of  "balanced" deficit reduction, an effort he has pursued since the election and which he  highlighted in his State of the Union speech last week.

The president says he wants to curb government spending, but any deal must include new tax revenue from changes to the tax code and protect entitlements.

GOP leaders also say they want to avert the blunt spending cuts -- which were enacted as part of a 2011 budget deal as a way to force a compromise.

Nonpartisan experts say the cuts would eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs and slow the recovery.

But Republicans argue that new taxes should not be included in the alternative. House Speaker John Boehner, (R-Ohio) said last week the cuts were likely to hit unless lawmakers agreed on a long-term plan that dramatically cuts government spending and eliminates the deficit over the next decade.

Senate Republicans are expected propose their own temporary alternative, which would curb the growth of the federal workforce.

The White House is continuing with the strategy that has yielded success in the past -- using the president's megaphone and a popular proposal to pressure Congress on deadline. That tactic successfully forced Republicans to agree to raise income taxes on top earners as part of last month's fiscal cliff deal. That deal also delayed the sequester for two months.

The Democrats are proposing another 10 month delay, replacing half the cuts with the so-called Buffett Rule, a requirement that those who have adjusted gross incomes above $1 million pay a minimum 30% tax rate.

The rule, an early staple in Obama's reelection campaign, is named for billionaire Warren Buffett, who has said that tax loopholes and deductions allow him to pay a lower effective tax rate than his secretary.

The Democratic proposal includes $55 billion in new revenue, along with cuts to farm subsidies and a smaller hit to defense spending than is scheduled.

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Kathleen.hennessey@latimes.com

Twitter: @khennessey

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Watch a Robot Interview <em>Portlandia'</em>s Fred Armisen

Here at Wired we don’t fear losing our jobs to robots – in fact, we advocate for it.

So when Fred Armisen stopped by the Wired office after the SF Sketchfest tribute to his Peabody Award-winning show Portlandia, we decided to let our robot Rob-EE do the talking. Armisen and Rob-EE even had a heart-to-android-heart. Rob-EE also managed to get some dirt about Armisen’s thoughts on the end of 30 Rock, working on both Portlandia and Saturday Night Live, and the very-prescient subject of a robot’s right to comedy.

“Hopefully there will be a day when all comedy is all robots,” Armisen says. “There should be comedians who perform only for robots – I’m saying human comedians that only perform for robots.”

Find out what else happened when Rob-EE sat down with Armisen in the video above. Portlandia airs Fridays at 10 p.m./9 p.m. Central on IFC.

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Romanian cinema triumphs again with top Berlin award

BERLIN (Reuters) – Romania claimed another major scalp on the European film festival circuit this weekend when “Child’s Pose” won the Golden Bear in Berlin, underlining the country’s emergence as a powerhouse of hard-hitting cinema in the post-Communist era.

The film, directed by Calin Peter Netzer, tells the story of Cornelia, an obsessive mother who uses every trick in the book to prevent her son from going to jail after he kills a boy in a car accident.

It is the latest in a long list of critical hits that have enjoyed startling success at festivals like Berlin and Cannes in recent years, helping to bring Romania‘s cinema to a wider audience.

Some of Romania‘s top directors, who have enjoyed the artistic freedom that flourished after the death of Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989, dismiss talk of a cinematic “new wave”, saying it lumps together very different styles and stories.

But ever since Cristi Puiu’s “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” hit Cannes in 2005, and two years later his compatriot Cristian Mungiu won the coveted Palme d’Or there for the harrowing abortion drama “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days”, Romanian cinema has been firmly on the map.

“It is an acknowledgement, I think, that Romanian cinema is still producing good quality cinema and has been for a few years and it is a good endowment that it is still like this,” Netzer told Reuters after receiving the Golden Bear for best film.

UNFLINCHING STORYTELLING

While each film differs, there is a common thread of unflinching storytelling and compelling human drama often laid out against the backdrop of a cold and uncaring society.

Netzer said “Child’s Pose” was not a critique of Romania today, despite its unflattering portrayal of flashy materialism and casual corruption among the nouveau riche.

“I think basically this is about a relationship, a kind of pathological relationship between mother and son,” he told reporters in Berlin after the closing ceremony late on Saturday.

“The rest – the corruption, the framework, the context, all of that is on a separate level and is really only a backdrop.”

Victory in Berlin is likely to give the movie a major boost in terms of distribution in Romania and beyond, although some critics wondered whether the alienating figures of both mother and son might limit its appeal.

“There’s an instant bond the audience has with the two young women in ’4 Months…’ which we are deliberately not supposed to have in ‘Child’s Pose’,” said Jay Weissberg, critic at trade publication Variety.

“The mother is a monstrous figure and her son is even worse.”

However he, like many others, was impressed by Luminita Gheorghiu’s portrayal of Cornelia, one of several standout performances in Berlin-nominated films by mature actresses making the most of the kind of parts rarely written in Hollywood.

Paulina Garcia was the popular winner of the best actress Silver Bear for her turn in Chilean film “Gloria”, in which she plays a 58-year-old divorcee who sets out to live life to the full despite her setbacks.

“We all face crossroads in our lives where we can retreat into ourselves or we can hit the dance floor,” said “Gloria” director Sebastian Lelio of his character.

The biggest surprise at the Berlin awards ceremony was the best actor prize going to Nazif Mujic, a Bosnian Roma who had never acted before and had to be talked into playing himself in a drama based on his real-life ordeal.

“An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker”, made for just 30,000 euros ($ 40,000), tells the story of how Bosnian hospitals refused to operate on his wife after she miscarried because she was not insured, despite the fact that her life was in danger.

Best director went to U.S. filmmaker David Gordon Green for his quirky road movie “Prince Avalanche” and Iranian entry “Closed Curtain” picked up the best script prize for directors Kamboziya Partovi and Jafar Panahi.

Panahi made the movie in secret in defiance of a 20-year filmmaking ban and was not allowed to travel to Berlin to collect his award.

“Tradition and culture remain, politicians come and go,” Partovi told reporters after receiving the honour.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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