Thai film “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” has won the coveted Palme d’Or for best picture at the Cannes film festival.
“Uncle Boonmee,” directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 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.
“I would like to thank my mother and my father, who 30 years ago, they took me to a little cinema in our little town, and I was so young and didn’t know what it was on the screen,” Weerasethakul said. “I didn’t know the concept of cinema. With this award, I think I know a little more what cinema is, but it still remains a mystery. I think this mystery keeps us coming back here and to share our world.”
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.
Bardem, an Oscar winner for “No Country for Old Men,” shared the Cannes best-actor prize, earning his honour for Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s “Biutiful,” a grim portrait of a dying father. Also playing a father in crisis, Elio Germano shared the best-actor award for Italian filmmaker Daniele Luchetti’s “Our Life,” a drama about a widower with three sons.
The second-place grand prize went to French director Xavier Beauvois’ solemn drama “Of Gods and Men,” based on the true story of seven French monks beheaded during Algeria’s civil war in 1996.
Chadian director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s stark film “A Screaming Man” received the third-place jury prize. The film chronicles the tragic consequences for a father after he loses his cherished job as a swimming pool attendant to his son amid his country’s civil war.
French actor-filmmaker Mathieu Amalric won the directing award for “On Tour,” in which he plays the manager of a troupe of American burlesque strippers performing around France. Amalric invited his five stripper stars to join him on stage as he accepted the prize.
The screenplay honour was presented to South Korean director Lee Chang-dong for “Poetry,” his gentle portrait of a grandmother (Yun Junghee) struggling to write a poem as she copes with the onset of Alzheimer’s and her troublesome grandson.