Cannes Film Festival 2007 Winners
CANNES - A graphic movie about an illegal abortion took the Palme d’Or last night at the closing of the 60th edition of the Cannes Film Festival.
Titled 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, a realistic drama Romanian director Cristian Mungiu said he almost didn’t make due to lack of ideas and funds won the prize that is second only to Oscar’s Best Picture for film glory. His film beat 21 competitors, including ones made by such international heavyweights as Joel and Ethan Coen, Quentin Tarantino and Wong Kar-wai.
“It looks a little bit to me like in a fairy tale, to be honest,” the shy director, 39, told a glittering audience at the Palais des Festivals, after receiving the Palme trophy from actor Jane Fonda.
“Some one year ago, we didn’t have any idea about this project. And some six months ago, we didn’t have any money to make it. And finally, we were just hoping that we were going to be in Cannes in any kind of competition, anywhere.”
Mungiu called the win a victory for small filmmakers the world over. Set in a small Romanian town before the fall of Communism, a time when abortion was punished by harsh jail sentences, the movie makes no judgments but spares no sensibilities; every stage of the procedure is shown.
It unspools in what seems like real time, as a young university student seeks to end an unwanted pregnancy despite the ban against the procedure and her risky decision to wait beyond the first trimester. The student and her female roommate become the prey of the male abortionist who exploits them.
The film had been one of the leading contenders for Palme glory in straw polls by journalists attending the festival. It had been running neck-and-neck with No Country for Old Men, the latest film by U.S. directors Joel and Ethan Coen.
The runner-up film prize, the Grand Prix, went to The Mourning Forest by Japan’s Naomi Kawase, for an intense movie about a troubled young nurse’s attempt to protect an elderly Alzheimer’s patient as he wanders in a forest searching for the grave of his wife.
It was an emotional moment for Kawase, who is one of the very few female directors to have received one of the top two prizes at Cannes. Only one woman, New Zealand’s Jane Campion, has won the Palme.
A special 60th-anniversary prize was given to U.S. filmmaker Gus Van Sant for Paranoid Park, his low-key work about an accidental death and a young man’s grief that many critics here considered inferior to Elephant, which won Van Sant the Palme in 2003.
Two films received special jury prizes: the animated memoir Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, based on Satrapi’s humorous and harrowing account of life before and after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution; and Stellet Licht (Silent Light), a drama of faith and morality by Mexico’s Carlos Reygadas, set amidst Mennonite farmers in northern Mexico.
Another American filmmaker, Julian Schnabel, won Best Director for his visually striking The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, his screen adaptation of the true-life account of a French magazine editor who became paralyzed after a stroke.
Acting awards went to big performances in small films. South Korea’s Jeon Do-yeon, who plays a young widow and mother struggling to maintain her sanity following twin tragedies in Secret Sunshine, was lauded for Best Actress.
Russia’s Konstantin Lavronenko, who played a distraught husband in The Banishment, a film about a marriage on the rocks, won for Best Actor. The award for Best Screenplay went to German writer/director Fatih Akin for The Edge of Heaven, a story of loss and forgiveness.
At a post-awards news conference, Canadian jury member Sarah Polley spoke of how intensely the two-week experience of watching great films from around the world had affected her. “I feel like I learned more in the last 10 or 11 days than I have in my whole life,” she said. “Everyone seemed to approach the discussions with immense curiosity and engagement. And I’ve never seen a group of people listen to each other so carefully. It was an absolute joy.”
Awards presented at the 60th Cannes Film Festival, selected by a nine-member jury headed by British director Stephen Frears:
Palme d’Or (Golden Palm): 4 Luni, 3 Saptamini Si 2 Zile (4 Months, 3 weeks and 2 days) - Cristian Mungiu, Romania
Grand Prize: Mogari No Mori (The Mourning Forest) - Naomi Kawase, Japan
Jury Prize: Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, Iran and France; and Stellet Licht (Silent Light) - Carlos Reygadas, Mexico
60th Anniversary Prize: Paranoid Park - Gus Van Sant, US
Best Director: Le Scaphandre et le papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) - Julian Schnabel, US
Best Actor: Konstantin Lavronenko (in The Banishment), Russia
Best Actress: Jeon Do-yeon (in Secret Sunshine), South Korea
Best Screenplay: The Edge of Heaven - Fatih Akin, Germany
Golden Camera (first-time director): Meduzot - Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen, Israel
Best Short Film: Ver Llover (Watching it Rain) - Elisa Miller, Mexico
