CANNES: Turkish film Winter Sleep, directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, won the top Palme d’Or award for best film yesterday at the 67th Cannes International Film Festival, the prize jury announced.
Ceylan, whose three-hour-plus film explores the huge gap between the powerful and powerless in his country, noted that the award came on the 100th anniversary of Turkish film.
He dedicated the award to “those who lost their lives during the last year”, adding that he was referring to the youth of his country.
Le Meraviglie (The Wonders) by Italian director Alice Rohrwacher took the second place prize for a coming-of-age story set in the Tuscan countryside as a family tries to eke out a bohemian life making honey.
Twenty-five-year-old Canadian director Xavier Dolan’s film Mommy shared the third-place prize with octogenarian French director Jean-Luc Godard’s Adieu au Langage (Goodbye to Language).
American director Bennett Miller won the best director award for Foxcatcher, British actor Timothy Spall won best actor for Mike Leigh’s film Mr Turner and Julianne Moore was named best actress in David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars.
Leviathan by Russia’s Andrei Zvyagintsev took the prize for best screenplay.
“It was an extremely diverse ensemble — films that were classical, films that were radical, films that were about the future of cinema,” jury member and Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn said after the awards were announced.
Hollywood Reporter critic Stuart Kemp said in a text message that the awards showed “no surprises with the awards going to predictable places”.
AFP
