It’s always hard to pick a winner from a strong festival. This year’s Berlinale had several worthy titles amongst its competition line-up, such as Andrew Haigh’s heart-breaking relationship study, 45 Years; Pablo Larrain’s bleak church critique, El Club; and Sebastian Schipper’s monumental, 140-minute one-take wonder, Victoria.

In the end, jury president Darren Aronofsky along with his fellow jurors Daniel Brühl, Bong Joon-Ho, Martha De Laurentiis, Claudia Llosa, Audrey Tautou and Matthew Weiner, decided to award the Golden Bear, the festival’s highest honour, to Jafar Panahi for his film Taxi.

Panahi is no stranger to the German capital’s prestigious festival. In 2006, his movie Offside was nominated for the Golden Bear and won the Grand Jury Prize. Incidentally, Yash Chopra was a member of the jury then. Seven years later, in  2013, Panahi’s Closed Curtain was again nominated for the Golden Bear and won Best Screenplay. In 2011, Panahi was meant to be in the jury (alongside Aamir Khan), but he had been sentenced to a 20-year ban on leaving the country two months prior, in December 2010.

While his earlier documentaries, This is not a Film and Closed Curtain were both great works of a frustrated mind and artist, Taxi is a more lively and vigorous piece of cinema. Think about it: it’s been four or five years since the Iranian authorities have made it illegal for Panahi to make movies. And he’s made three in that time period, all having been showcased at major festivals around the world. There’s simply no way for anyone to stop him finding creative ways to make and release projects. Panahi is a lover of cinema and Taxi is the best cinematic love letter one can make, given the restrictions. And that anyone would be angered at a film as humane and harmless as this is outrageous.

Panahi plays himself here, or does he? He has ingeniously cast himself as a taxi driver, whose vehicle serves as a sort of Production Company. His passengers are ordinary people, or they might be actors, as this line is blurred on more than one occasion. In a way, Panahi is making several films with Taxi, within his taxi. Each passenger is a film itself. There’s the desperate woman, whose injured husband needs to be transported to the hospital immediately (action thriller), there are the two superstitious women holding a bowl with goldfish, needing to be at a holy shrine at an exact time (religious satire), or there’s the bootleg DVD seller, who recognises Panahi and thinks he’s figured out that Panahi is shooting a film inside his car (comedy). But who is to say that the DVD seller isn’t an actor himself?

There’s also Panahi’s own niece, Hanna Saedi, who turns out to be quite a decent performer. She needs to make her own film for a school project, but there are certain restrictions. She must, for example, at all costs avoid “sordid realism” and Panahi can’t help but smile. He smiles a lot, which is endearing to watch but never does he demand sympathy. This is the greatest strength — more than a piece of political resistance, Taxi is an entertaining piece of cinema. It can be seen and appreciated by anyone without the knowledge of Panahi’s history and it still works.

Of course, solidarity with Panahi might have been one aspect of Taxi winning the Golden Bear, but above all, simply put, it has been awarded because it’s the best film, not best political statement. Saedi made it to Berlin for the awards night, as Panahi still isn’t allowed to leave Iran. All this time after she drove through the streets of Teheran with her “director uncle,” capturing what would become a gem of a film, the little girl got to triumphantly hold the golden trophy and wave it in the air. And then she broke down in tears. It was a touching moment and a fitting climax to the Berlinale, a festival that has championed and recognised a truly important work of art. Taxi proves that Panahi’s ban is a farce and that it must be lifted.