'Poetry' wins Cannes best screenplay prize
Korean film "Poetry" won the best screen play
prize at the Cannes
film festival on Sunday, news reports said.
The film, directed by Lee Chang-dong, tells a story of an
old lady who finds happiness in learning of poetry for the first time in her
life while a harsh reality forces her to suffer guilt and fear, Yonhap News said.
The film “Ha Ha Ha” by South Korean director Hong Sang-soo won the top prize at the Cannes film festival sidebar competition, Un
Certain Regard, on Sunday.
The movie is about a trip down memory lane with a
filmmaker and a movie critic sharing memories about their separate trips to Tongyoung, South
Gyeongsang Province.
South Korean top actors and actresses including Kim Sang-gyung, Yu Jun-sang, Moon So-ri,
Ye Ji-won and Youn Yuh-jung starred in the film, receiving no compensation.
Hong has a reputation of making movies in such a way.
“I hope this prize can help many friends who made
the movie together. I am going to keep on making movies, in the same way I used
to make them,” said Hong after winning the prize. Actor Yu Jun-sang and
actress Ye Ji-won were by his side at the festival.
Hong said the prize money of 51 million won ($42,700) will
be used to support the movie’s distribution in France.
“It is not a big amount of money but can be a big
support in distributing small-scale movies such as ‘Ha Ha Ha,’” he said.
“My movies are something people can feel at ease
with. But sometimes they do not even get the chance to be shown to the public
because of their ‘image’ as a difficult art film. I hope this win
can boost the number of viewers for my movies.”
Hong had been invited to the world’s biggest film
festival six times -- the most frequently invited among South Korean directors
-- but this is the first time he has won a prize.
Other works by Hong that were shown at Cannes include “The
Power of Kangwon Province” (1998), “Virgin
Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors” (2000), “Woman is the Future of Man”
(2004), “Tale of Cinema” (2005) and “Like You Know It All”
(2009).
It is also the first time that a South Korean movie has
won the top prize at the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes film festival since director Lee Doo-yong’s “Moulleya,
Moulleya” was first invited to the competition
26 years ago. “Mother,” by director Bong Joon-ho
had also entered the category last year but did not win a prize.
The win is especially notable as the competition was extra
tough this year. Films by world-famous directors such as “I Wish I Knew”
by Jia Zhangke, “The
Strange Case of Angelica” by Manuel de Oliviera
and “Film Socialism” by Jean-Luc Godard
were in the competition along with Hong’s.
Un Certain Regard gave its jury prize to “Octubre” by Peruvian brothers Daniel and Diego Vega,
who were awarded on their first visit to Cannes.
Adela Sanchez, Eva Bianco and Victoria Raposo, three
actresses in the Argentinean film “Los Labios”
by Ivan Fund and Santiago Loza, won the best acting
prizes.
Source: The Korea Herald