The hypnotic Thai film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives was the surprise winner at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday, while Academy Award winners Juliette Binoche and Javier Bardem earned acting honors
The hypnotic Thai film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives was the surprise winner at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday, while Academy Award winners Juliette Binoche and Javier Bardem earned acting honors.
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| All smiles: Director Apichatpong Weerasethakul poses with the Palme D'Or |
Uncle Boonmee, directed by Apichatpong Weera-sethakul, traces the dreamlike final days of a man dying of kidney failure as the ghost of his dead wife returns to tend him and his long-lost son comes home in the form of a furry jungle spirit.
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| Juliette Binoche and Javier Bardem, who won the acting honours. Pics/AFP |
Binoche, an Oscar winner for The English Patient, won best actress for the cryptic love story Certified Copy, directed by past Palme d'Or winner Abbas Kiarostami.
During her speech, Binoche pleaded for the release of Kiarostami's countryman, detained Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi -- who had been asked to be on this year's nine-member jury. "I hope he will be here himself next year," Binoche said.
Bardem, an Oscar winner, shared the Cannes best-actor prize, earning his honour for Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Biutiful, a grim portrait of a dying father supporting his family with a variety of criminal rackets in Barcelona.
Also playing a father in crisis, Elio Germano shared the best-actor award for Our Life, a drama about a widower with three sons. "I'm very happy that we are sharing the best actor," Bardem said, adding it should happen more often "so less people lose. It's very hard for people to lose in the sense of, in a festival, you can't really say what's best."
