Romanian movie wins top prize in Cannes Film Festival

Cristian Mungiu's film, which was screened early in the competition and remained on the list of critics' favorites for the festival's top prize until the very end, is a deceptively simple but grim story set in the last days of the Communism in Romania.

It tells the story of excruciatingly hard times, and when a college girl goes in for an illegal abortion, she and her university dormitory roommate find themselves being exploited in the bargain.

Incidentally, Mungiu's film also won the International Critics Prize given by the jury of the FIPRESCI, the global federation of film critics.

Mungiu put the Palme d'Or in perspective last night: "I hope that the award is going to be good news for small filmmakers from small countries because it looks like you don't necessarily need a big budget and a lot of stars."

The nine-member jury headed by British filmmaker Stephen Frears chose Naomi Kawase's Japanese film, "The Mourning Forest", for the Grand Prix runner-up prize, while American painter Julian Schnabel snapped up the best director award for the true-life "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly".

The US filmmaker's movie tells the story of a flamboyant French journalist, Jean-Dominique Bauby, who at the peak of his career suffered paralysis and yet went on to write a best-selling book in the 1990s.

While critics had praised the film for its sensitivity in the run-up to the big night, some had found "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" a tad depressing.

Schnabel spiritedly countered that view at the post-award press conference.

"I don't agree. What the film tells us is that we are dead and blind when we have a body. It is when disaster strikes that we discover our true selves."

The Best screenplay award went to German-Turkish writer-director Fatih Akin for "The Edge of Heaven", a cross-border tale of hope and reconciliation that was tipped to win the Palme d'Or as much on account of its story-telling prowess as for its humanistic core.

Interestingly, all the names on the Palme d'Or list on Sunday were those of first-time winners. They got the better of stiff competition put up by Cannes veterans like Wong Kar Wai ("My Blueberry Nights"), Gus Van Sant ("Paranoid Park") and the Coen Brothers ("No Country for Old Men").

Also in the running were well-received films like "Alexandra", directed by Russia's Alexander Sokurov, "Still Light" from Mexico's Carlos Reygadas, and "Persepolis", an animated adaptation of Iranian emigre Marjane Satrapi's hugely popular graphic novel of the same name. - DDNews India