TEHERAN (AFP) - iran's Jafar Panahi who won the Berlin film festival for his movie Taxi said Sunday he wished cinemagoers at home could see his films rather than his works having to be smuggled abroad.

The laureate of Berlin's Golden Bear charged that officials of the Cinema Organisation, a branch of the interior ministry which supervises the industry in the Islamic republic, were "surrounding cinema with high walls".

"The people in power accuse us of making films for foreign festivals," he said on behalf of Iranian directors. "They hide behind political walls and don't say that our films are never authorised for screening in Iranian cinemas".

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier hailed the choice among 19 films in the competition as "an important symbol for artistic freedom", as commentators noted the principle was under threat around the world.

Berlin newspaper Der Tagesspiegel wrote in a front-page editorial Sunday that the festival had shown that "especially in these days of global unrest, art and political consciousness can light a beacon". expression.

The Berlin film festival wrapped up Sunday after giving its Golden Bear top prize to Panahi, in a move hailed as a triumph for freedom of expression.

Taxi is Panahi's third picture smuggled out of the country in defiance of an official 20-year filmmaking ban, imposed for a documentary he tried to make on the unrest following Iran's disputed 2009 presidential election.

Hollywood director Darren Aronofsky, the jury president at the 65th Berlinale, said at a gala awards ceremony late Saturday that Panahi had surmounted restrictions that had the power to "damage the soul of the artist".

"Instead of allowing his spirit to be crushed and giving up, instead of allowing himself to be filled with anger and frustration, Jafar Panahi created a love letter to cinema," Aronofsky said.

The 54-year-old Panahi is also barred from travelling abroad and could not attend the festival. His young niece Hana Saeidi, who appears in Taxi along with the director, wept as she picked up the statuette for him and held it aloft for the cameras.

News website Spiegel Online said the Golden Bear sent "an important message against the restriction of art", calling it a "triumph for free speech".

"The Berlinale remains political," it said, noting the festival's reputation for championing edgy, topical cinema.

Saeidi wept "tears of joy that the world took note of the fate of her uncle, standing in for many more artists threatened with censorship and repression in Iran and other countries that restrict artistic and personal freedom", it said.

Panahi's last movie shot in secret, 2013's elegiac Closed Curtain, won a Silver Bear in Berlin for best screenplay, drawing protests from the Iranian government.

Trade magazine The Hollywood Reporter called the prize for Panahi "a victory both for cinema and artistic freedom".

Taxi was an early hit among audiences at the 11-day festival, the first major cinema showcase of the year in Europe.

In it, Panahi himself offers his impressions of contemporary Teheran from behind the wheel of a yellow cab.

A mounted dashboard camera allowed him to film, at first, away from the prying eyes of the Islamic state's authorities.

Each person he offers a lift - including members of his own family - has a story to tell, an axe to grind or an issue to debate about life in today's Iran.

Panahi proves a genial master of ceremonies, treating his sometimes hysterical passengers with unfailing politeness and good humour.

The film builds to a chilling climax in which the extent and limits of the director's liberties are revealed.

Film industry bible Variety called Taxi a "terrific road movie" that offered "a provocative discussion of Iranian social mores and the art of cinematic storytelling".

The daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung said the Golden Bear for Taxi was well-deserved not simply for its political message but also on its artistic merits, calling Panahi's film "witty and ingenious".

"Giving him prizes is a way for the West to disapprove of the politically motivated capricious treatment of the filmmaker by the mullah regime," it said.

"He has shown how, using the simplest means, as a smart and funny observer of your surroundings, you can make a moving film".