Michelle Yeoh honored with Golden Bear
Berlin festival honors her lifetime achievements
Michelle Yeoh received the Honorary Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, using her acceptance speech to champion emerging and underrepresented artists. Urging young creators to embrace rather than dilute their differences, Yeoh described the award as "not a finish line, but an invitation to keep listening, to keep evolving" and held the prize close as she spoke of gratitude and wonder. The first Asian woman to receive the lifetime‑achievement honor, she traced her rise from Hong Kong action cinema through global hits including a Bond film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and an Academy Award‑winning turn in Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Filmmaker Sean Baker presented the tribute, recalling how Yeoh's Hong Kong work—seen in bootleg VHS tapes he found in New York—redefined action performance by marrying grace, intelligence and humanity with spectacle. The ceremony featured clips spanning her diverse career and testimonies to her discipline, humility and boundary‑breaking roles that reshaped expectations for women and Asian performers in international cinema.
Festival programming opened with Shahrbanoo Sadat’s No Good Men screened out of competition in the Berlinale Special Gala, and 22 films remain in competition for the Golden and Silver Bears. Jury president Wim Wenders and six jurors will award the prizes at the closing ceremony. Attendees described the evening as both celebratory and reflective, noting the symbolism of honoring Yeoh at a major European festival that has long promoted artistic freedom and international voices.
Organizers and peers highlighted Yeoh’s versatility across action, drama and arthouse work and emphasized how her visibility has expanded opportunities for diverse storytellers. Yeoh’s remarks centered on the power of storytelling to connect cultures and on the responsibility of established artists to protect spaces where new voices can be heard. The honor was portrayed as both recognition of a storied career and a call to sustained engagement with evolving cinema and its emerging talents.
