Tag: Cannes film festival

  • Turkey’s “Winter Sleep” wins Cannes top Palme d’Or prize

    Turkey’s “Winter Sleep” wins Cannes top Palme d’Or prize

    Turkish film “Winter Sleep” directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan won the top Palme d’Or award for best film on Saturday at the 67th Cannes International Film Festival, the prize jury announced.

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    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).

    via Turkey’s “Winter Sleep” wins Cannes top Palme d’Or prize | JPost | Israel News.

  • Turkey’s Nuri Bilge Ceylan closes Cannes’ competition

    Turkey’s Nuri Bilge Ceylan closes Cannes’ competition

    Cannes, France – Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s film about a group of police officers searching the desolate Anatolian steppes for evidence of a murder brought the main competition for the 64th Cannes Film Festival to an end Saturday.

    But the film, Bir Zamanlar Anadolu’da (Once Upon A Time In Anatolia), is not so much about the murder than shedding light on the vested interests that rule small-town political life in Turkey.

    The film was about ‘the world of bureaucracy in a little town,’ the Istanbul-born Ceylan told a press conference in Cannes.

    ‘I am familiar with this world. My father worked in a bureaucracy in a small town. They have they’re little struggle for powers.’

    Bir Zamanlar Anadolu’da, which is loosely based on a true story, is one of 20 films competing this year for the Palme d’Or, the top prize at Cannes.

    For the film, Ceylan assembled a cast of local characters, including the local police chief, the prosecutor, the doctor charged with carrying out the autopsy on the body and an assorted collection of police officers and diggers, who have the job of retrieving the body once it is found.

    The film illustrates the petty conflicts and bureaucratic rivalries as the suspect in the case leads a convoy of police vehicles on a 12-hour search for the body across vast open terrain.

    ‘I love very wide shots because they give an impression of space,’ said Ceylan. ‘They make you feel alone because we are very alone on this earth.’

    Bir Zamanlar Anadolu’da is the fourth film by Ceylan to premiere in Cannes’ main competition. His work, including the widely acclaimed feature film Uzak (Distant) has picked up a string of awards at the festival over the years. In 2008 Ceylan won the best director award for Uc Maymun (Three Monkeys).

    His latest film comes at a time when the Turkish film industry is booming.

    ‘It’s very dynamic,’ Ankara Cinema Association chief Ahmet Boyacioglu told the German Press Agency dpa. ‘Everyone is shooting a film.’

    Last year, another Turkish director, Semih Kaplanoglu, won the Berlin Film Festival’s coveted Golden Bear for Bal (Honey), which explores the relationship between a young boy and his father.

    Despite the accolades that Turkish directors have won at festivals in recent years, it has been the recent success of Turkish blockbusters that has helped trigger the rebirth of the motion picture business in the country, industry observers say.

    Turkey currently produces about 70 feature films a year with a new generation of filmmakers also starting to make their mark. Only about 25 films were being produced each year five years ago.

    There is also a sense of national pride among moviegoers in Turkey, local films account for about 53 per cent of overall box office earnings – one of the highest rates in the world.

    About a third of the 1,700 silver screens across Turkey, show blockbusters, but there is also scope for arthouse movies such Ceylan’s.

    Movie admissions in are at present running at about 40 million in a country with a population of about 73 million.

    Turkish filmmakers also appear to be challenging the might of Hollywood.

    Last year, about eight of Turkey’s top 10 box office hits were from Turkish directors. Only two were from Hollywood.

    ‘Now Turkish people want Turkish films,’ said Boyacioglu. ‘Turkish producers can make Hollywood-style films,’ he said. These are films which have budgets of up to 5 million euros.

    Even the international blockbuster Avatar was not able to match the success in Turkey of homegrown films such as Mahsun Kirmizigul’s comedy Five Minarets in New York.

    The popularity of movie-going in Turkey means that nation’s cinema business pumps out films on a complete range of themes from political movies through to love stories and comedies. ‘We are shooting almost everything,’ said Boyacioglu.

    via Turkey’s Nuri Bilge Ceylan closes Cannes’ competition – Monsters and Critics.

  • Filmmaker Jafar Panahi will be freed on bail late today

    Filmmaker Jafar Panahi will be freed on bail late today

    By Ladane Nasseri

    May 25 (Bloomberg) — Iranian filmmaker and opposition supporter Jafar Panahi, who was invited to be a juror at the Cannes film festival, will be freed on bail late today, weeks after directors including Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese called for his release.

    A bail equivalent to $200,000 was posted, Panahi’s wife, Tahereh Saeedi, told the Iranian Labour News Agency today. “Based on what we are told, he will be released tonight between 7 and 11 p.m.” Iran time.

    “It has been agreed for him to be released on bail and the legal process and the judicial steps are being followed,” Prosecutor General Abbas Jafari-Dolatabadi was quoted as saying yesterday by the state-run Iranian Students News Agency. He didn’t say when the release or further court proceedings in the case would take place.

    Panahi, a backer of the movement that grew out of protests against last year’s disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was detained on March 2. Charges against him include making a movie without a permit and wearing a green scarf, a symbol of the opposition, at a film festival abroad, his wife said last month.

    Saeedi, who was detained with Panahi and later released, has said he was planning to direct a film about the problems of a family of four amid the political unrest prompted by Ahmadinejad’s victory in the June 12 vote.

    Spielberg, Coppola and Scorsese were among directors who signed a petition last month urging the Iranian government to release Panahi, saying filmmakers in Iran “should be celebrated, not censored, repressed and imprisoned.”

    ‘Attack on Art’

    Fellow Iranian film director Abbas Kiarostami, whose film “Certified Copy” premiered at the Cannes film festival, also made an appeal at the event last week for Panahi’s release, the U.K.’s Guardian reported.

    “When a filmmaker is imprisoned, it is an attack on art as a whole,” Kiarostami told reporters, according to the newspaper. “We need explanations. I don’t understand how a film can be a crime, particularly when that film has not been made.”

    French actress Juliette Binoche, who starred in Kiarostami’s film and won the best actress award for the role at Cannes, wept when she heard that Panahi started a hunger strike on May 16, Agence France-Presse reported. Binoche brandished a sign with the name of Panahi as she faced the audience after receiving her award, AFP said on May 23.

    Several of Panahi’s films have been banned in Iran, including “Crimson Gold,” which looks at the privileges of Iran’s upper class through the eyes of a pizza-delivery man and won the Prix Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2003. Also banned is “The Circle,” which portrays the harsh aspects of life for several women in the Islamic nation. It won the Golden Lion award at the 2000 Venice film festival.

    More recently, Panahi won the second-highest award at the 2006 Berlin film festival with “Offside,” a comic tale about a government ban on women and girls attending soccer games.

    –Editors: Philip Sanders, Heather Langan

    To contact the reporter on this story: Ladane Nasseri in Beirut at lnasseri@bloomberg.net.

    To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Hirschberg at phirschberg@bloomberg.net.

    The Bloomberg