Kim Ki-Duk’s “Arirang” and Andreas Dresen’s “Stopped on Track” tied for the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes this year, a jury headed by Emir Kusturica announced Saturday.
The Special Jury Prize was awarded to Andrey Zvyaginstev’s “Elena,” while Mohammad Rasoulof won the directing prize for “Goodbye.” Rasoulof’s wife accepted the award for her husband, her words of gratitude translated in French and English from Farsi.
“On behalf of my husband, I would like to thank all of those who helped make this film alive, and I’d like to thank the festival organizers and especially the jury for this prize we have received tonight,” she said.
Dresen thanked his team when accepting the award, “It’s overwhelming to get this prize from this jury,” he said. “Me and my crew went through hard times last year. As we are filmmakers, we had the possibility to put our feelings in the production, like putting things in the bottle and throwing it in the water. Fortunately, this bottle reached the Mediterranean Sea and made its way to Cannes. I’d really like to thank the audience, my crew and the actors.”
Kim Ki-duk opted for a different way of expressing his gratitude when accepting the award. The South Korean director sang a song from his prize-winning film to thunderous applause from the attendees.
The jury presided over Kusturica was compromised of French actress Elodie Bouchez, The Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw, Tribeca Enterprises CCO Geoffrey Gilmore, and Daniela Michel, the director of Mexico’s Morelia Film Festival.
Kusturica was in a jovial mood, with the Serbian director looking forward to the future success of Un Certain Regard. “In 25 years of coming to this place, I’ve never watched a movie here because I was the darling of this festival and I was not behaving properly,” he said. “But this time, sitting here watching cinema, I recognized that Un Certain Regard is a really good section. I hope that, one day, as I get older, UCR will be bigger than competition.”
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