The 58th Cannes Film Festival ended this weekend with the Golden Palm Award having been given to Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's The Child.
Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flower took the Jury's Grand Prize and Chinese director Wang Xiaoshuai's (
Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien (
PHOTO: EPA
Not surprisingly, the Best Director Prize went to the Michael Haneke of Austria for his work on Hidden, which was highly praised by both critics and film buyers.
Tommy Lee Jones won the Best Actor Prize for his work in Three Burials by Melquiades Estrada, while the Best Actress prize went to Hanna Laslo for the film Free Zone.
Three Burials also took the Best Screenplay Prize awarded to Guillermo Arriaga.
The winning film, The Child, is about a young couple faced with unexpected roles as new parents to a new-born child and who are forced to make changes to their idle lives.
The Belgian brother filmmakers are known for making intriguing love stories, but this time the film is a simple and touching story with a message on social issues.
"We just like to look at things and people in our hometown and perhaps invent a little story happening in the place to hopefully entertain people," said Jean-Pierre Dardenne with a satisfied smile holding the Golden Palm trophy.
Jury Grand Prize winner Jim Jarmusch told the crowd he was highly honored to compete with filmmakers such as Wim Wenders, David Cronenburg and Hou, to whom he said "I am your student."
A frequent Cannes winner with works such as Stranger than Paradise and Night on Earth, Jarmusch won the prize this year with a slow-paced drama exploring the meaning of past loves, moments of decision and the missing parts of human communication.
Bill Murray plays a bachelor who one day receives a mysterious unsigned letter from an ex-girlfriend. The letter informs him that he has a son who may be looking for him.
Hesitantly, he embarks on a cross-country journey to meet four, each distinct and charming, past loves.
Jarmusch also expressed his graciousness to Cannes for helping make him known to the world. "Without Cannes, my films would not be able to show to the same amount of people," he said at the press conference after the award ceremony.
Michael Haneke, who directed the pschological drama The Piano Teacher and the pshycho-thriller Funny Game, this year made a milder film. Hidden is a suspense-filled story, beginning with a TV show host who receives a mysterious package and gradually reveals injustices carried out by a French bourgeois against an Algerian friend.
"I am tremendously happy about the successful sale of the film. You can never have too many people to see your film," Haneke said.
Taiwan's Swallow Wing Films (
The most visibly ebullient person at Saturday's award ceremony was Wang.
Upon receiving the award, he informed the audience that Saturday was also his birthday.
"Now I know why my parents gave birth to me 39 years ago on the same day," Wang said.
Before Shanghai Dreams, Wang's name was on the Chinese authorities' blacklist of Chinese directors and was never granted a screening permit for his films.
His previous film, Beijing Bicycle (
"This is the first time that I was allowed to make a film in the system. And I immediately won an award. It's indeed a great encouragement for me and my way of filmmaking. I feel more comfortable now about my filmmaking style," Wang said.
"Me and my crew will definitely go for drinks later!" he added.
Shanghai Dreams is set partly in the 1960s, when city residents were encouraged to leave the cities and settle in the poorer regions of the country to help develop the local economy. Later, in the 1980s, many of these families tried to move back to the cities to cash in on the economic reforms transforming the coastal cities.
The film's protagonist is a 19-year-old girl living in Guizhou province. That's where she grew up, made friends and where she first experienced love. But her father believes that their future lies in Shanghai.
The story of the film is also Wang's childhood experience.
"I used to hate my parents for moving the family around. But now I feel grateful that they brought us out from Guizhou to Shanghai," Wang said.
While Hou failed to win yet again with his sixth entry in Cannes, another Taiwanese director managed to secure two minor awards.
In the festival's side event, International Critic's Week, director Ho Wei-ting (
Ho also won the TV5 Young Critic Award, which is selected by young critics and students. French Television TV5 offers an advertisement space to announce the winner.
Ho and his cinematographer Jake Pollack were very excited by the awards. "Though it's not the biggest award in the program, it's a very helpful prize for us," he said.
Ho is currently planning a feature-length film that he says will be a road movie filmed in Taiwan.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist