A special round of the Cannes Festival closed: Samir Farid comments on the awards, while Ahmed Atef reviews one of the more controversial features The awards of the 60th Cannes Festival, announced on Sunday, were full of surprises, what with the coveted Palme d'Or going to Romanian filmmaker Christian Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, a first for Romania -- to coincide with the country's admission into the EU. Born in 1968, the young director cut an unexpected figure on the podium: in an unaffected he expressed his happiness with the honour, explaining that, only six months before, he did not have enough money to finish his film, and saying that the prize demonstrates that budgets have little to do with artistic value; a low budget does not stand in the way of a high award. Worth noting is that the film, Mungiu's third, cost the equivalent of no more than LE1 million. His debut, West (2002) was screened at Cannes in 2002. It was the beginning of what has, in the last five years, come to be known as Freedom Cinema -- the latest wave in Romania, which emerged only following the fall of Ceausescu. Four Months is the first in a series named "Stories from the Golden Age", about life under the former regime, intended not so much to condemn the past as to warn future generations; the artist does not express his political opinion in direct terms but rather through the everyday life of ordinary people. Set in a small Romanian town in 1987, the film tells the story of Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) who, in the student hostel, is helping her colleague Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) to have an abortion though she herself is four months, three weeks and two days pregnant. (Out of wedlock: in 1966, deeming lower birthrates an act of treason, Ceausescu had outlawed abortion; in 23 years, statistical estimates point to some half a million women who died in clandestine operations. In fact in 1989, the first year after the law was abolished, over one million abortions took place.) The film, also written by Mungiu, depicts exactly 24 hours: a day and a night. The action begins to unfold in Otilia and Gabita's room, ending in the restaurant of the hotel where the abortion was carried out. The dramatic structure is classical, preserving the Aristotelian unities of time, place and action. However, the texture is purely cinematic as the meaning is expressed primarily through the grammar of film language. Filmic elements include the colours of death (blue, black and white), a rhythm created by long takes involving continuous camera movements and long dialogues, the absence of a musical score, a minimalist set, and the predominance of medium shots -- with no use of close-ups whatsoever, which allows for more meditation and cools down emotions; the filmmaker's intention is clearly not so much to force the viewers to sympathise with a girl who dies as to allow them to contemplate life under a nightmarish regime. It is a film about the homeland turning into a huge prison, in both the material and the spiritual senses of the word. The rooms and the corridors are like prison cells and wards. People in the streets, buses, hotels and apartments are either sombre and silent or windbags. Not a single shot shows the horizon. Even more of a surprise was the Japanese filmmaker Naomi Kawase's The Mourning Forest winning the festival's grand prix, especially with competition of the calibre of Emir Kustarica and Joel and Ethan Coen, or Andrea Zvyagintsev's The Banishment, in which Konstantin Lavronenko won the best actor award. The animated film Persepolis directed by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud shared the Jury Award with Stellet Licht (Silent Light--France, Mexico, Netherlands) directed by Carlos Reygadas. This is not to criticise the Grand Prix winner, however: a beautiful work of art about a spiritual relationship between Shigeki (Shigeki Uda), who lives in a home for the old, and Machiko (Machiko Ono), a young girl who works there. Shigeki had lost his wife, she her daughter, and in a two-day trip they take together each regains balance and the ability to carry on living despite the pain. This is the fourth feature film by the female director, born in 1969 -- almost the same age as the Romanian Palme d'Or winner. Kawase won the Golden Camera award at the Cannes Festival in 1997 for her debut; her third film entered the 2003 competition. Cannes has awarded prizes to more than one documentary, but the French artist Vincent Paronnaud's black- and-white animation Persepolis will go down in the annals of history as the first animated film to win Cannes Festival award. Based on four comic strip books by the Iranian artist Marjane Satrapi, it is an autobiographical account of everyday life in Iran, starting with the 1979 Islamic Revolution, when Satrapi was studying at the French Lycée, going through her sojourn in Vienna to study art, and ending with her leaving Iran for good to settle in Paris in 1994. The film is one of the most direct attacks on theocracy to date: there is not much difference between the Taliban and Iran's ayatollahs; it shows how, starting out as a populist movement supported by even the communist left (to which the protagonist -- Satrapi's family belongs), the revolution was immediately usurped by the clergy. There were 30,000 political prisoners under the Shah, for example; now there are 300,000. It shows how the Iranian theocracy denied people not only personal freedom but the privacy of their homes, depriving them of films and records. The epitome the sight of art students painting a model of whom nothing can be shown but the face. No surprise, then, that the Iranian government presented an official objection to the screening of the film at its French Embassy. What is surprising is that, rather than the Palme d'Or or the Grande Prix, it shared the jury award. MYSTERY OF MAN: When Djamila Bouhired was on trial, her head was high; she was smiling. The French judge said, "What makes you laugh? This is a serious matter." And when Jacques Vergès, a young lawyer, volunteered to defend her, he fell in love and dedicated himself to setting her free. Even when she received a death sentence, Vergès did not give up, spearheading an international campaign in which a number of heads of states interfered on her behalf. She was freed and Algeria was liberated. She has since worked in journalism; with Vergès, she issues the magazine Les revolutions Afriques, and they travel to many places of the world. In China, the leader Mao Tsi Young asks Vergès when will you and Djamila get married? So they do, live together in Paris and have two children. However, Vergès starts to change after his life becomes devoid of the excitement and the role he had chosen for himself as advocate of liberation movements. Suddenly he disappears; his absence lasts eight years. There are many theories to explain this, one of which -- probably a rumour resulting from his connection with Wadi' Haddad, an armed resistance leader considered one of the earliest terrorists in the West -- relating that he was seen in Palestine. It is variously believed that he disappeared in Libya, Yemen and Jordan, where the camps of the Palestinian resistance movement were located. Another rumour takes him to the Soviet Union, where he had received a training to bring about regime change, supervised by the KGB. South Africa, because he was also friends with Nelson Mandella. Cambodia, Pol Pot... Speculation goes on, spurred on by the 20 interviews this film comprises -- with historians, journalists, contemporaries and friends of Vergès. Since his return, Vergès has defended, among many other controversial figures, Milosovic, Roger Garoudi and Saddam Hussein (whom he wanted to defend at court). But the film's most engaging story is that of Vergès with the international terrorist Carlos, who carried out the biggest number of terrorist operations throughout the 1980s and 1990s and is currently imprisoned in France; starting out in the service of Wadi' Haddad, Anis Naqash and other Palestinian liberation fighters, he moved onto other liberation movements and eventually worked for money, managing to secure the release of arrested terrorists (among whom was his lover) by carrying out a string of operations within France -- only to be kidnapped in Sudan, where he was expelled from Syria, and put on trial at home. There Vergès defended him, but their relationship became strained and he gave up on the case without any explanation. The man remains a mystery subject. If he was a spy, how many countries did he work for? And if he is universally hated, why has he been kept alive? (Vergès is now 80.) And what about his children by Bouhired, whom he abandoned (Bouhired lives in Algeria and has completely retired from public life). These and other questions were raised in Barbet Schroeder's The Terror's Advocate. OFFICIAL COMPETITION: The 60th Cannes Festival's Special Award: Paranoid Park (USA), directed by Gus Van Sant The Palme d'Or: 4 Luni, 3 Saptamini Si 2 Zile (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Romania), directed by Christian Mungiu The Grand Prix: Amogari no Mori (The Mourning Forest, Japan), directed by Naomi Kawase Special Jury Award: Persepolis (France), directed by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud ; Stellet Licht (Silent Light, France, Mexico, Netherlands) directed by Carlos Reygadas Best Actress: Jeon Do-yeon for Secret Sunshine (South Korea) directed by Lee Chang-dong Best Actor: Konstantin Lavronenko for The Banishment (Russia) directed by Andrea Zvyagintsev. Best Director: for Le scaphandre et le papillon (The Divine Bell and the Butterfly, France)Best Screenplay: Auf der anderen seite (The Edge of Heaven, Germany), written and directed by Turkish-German Fatih Akin Camera d'Or: (for Debut Feature Film) Meduzot (Jelly Fish, Israel) directed by Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen Prix Vulcain: (for Best Artistic Achievement) Cinematographer Janusz Kaminski for Le scaphandre et le papillon UN CERTAIN REGARD SECTION: Special Award: California Dreamin' (Romania), directed by the late Cristian Nemescu Directors: Eran Kolirin for Bikur Hatizmoret (The Visit of the Fanfare, Israel); Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi for Actrices (Actresses) Special Mention: Control, directed by Anton Corbijn SHORT FILMS COMPETITION: Palme d'Or: Ver Llover (Rain Vision, Mexico), directed by Elisa Miller My Grandmother (Singapore), directed by Anthony Chen Run (New Zealand), directed by Mark Albiston
