Panh’s film, based on his nightmarish memoir The Elimination, documents his own family’s experience under the heavy-handed Communist Party’s Khmer Rouge, which resulted in the death of his parents and sisters. The premise of the “missing picture” comes from the censorship within Cambodia, where no photo exists documenting the atrocities committed against Panh’s his family and relatives during Pol Pot’s reign of terror from 1975 to 1979. The uses old documentary footage, or whatever footage remained from the time, which was mainly regime propaganda. To represent his deceased relatives, Panh used hundreds of carefully carved clay figures.
The Un Certain Regard accolade is decided by a jury of cinema insiders and rewards works from up-and-coming filmmakers or those that transmit original messages and aesthetics. Thomas Vinterberg, this year’s jury president, said, “I am very honoured to be awarding this prize, which we all agree is for a fantastic movie. This selection was ferociously non-sentimental but poetic nonetheless. It was political, highly original, sometimes disturbing, varied, but above all unforgettable.”
“Clay figurines, extreme beauty, violence… systematic humiliation of human nature… are images that will follow us for a long time… Moments that remain in our collective memory, a mirror of our existence,” he added.
The Jury Prize, the category’s secondary award, was awarded to the Palestinian film Omar, a war-torn love story, directed by Hany Abu-Assad.
Omar by Hany Abu-Assad won the Un Certain Regard Jury Award
Other awards give were the Directing Prize to Alain Guiraudie for Stranger by the Lake; the ensemble cast of La Juala de Ora by Diego Quemeda-Diez picked up the A Certain Talent Prize; and Ryan Coogler received the Avenir Prize for his film Fruitvale Station.
The awards for Quinzaine Realisateurs (Directors’ Fortnight) were also handed out in a separate ceremony.
The CICAE, (Confédération Internationale des Cinémas d’Art et d’Essai), gave the Art Cinema Award, prize that helps with film distribution to Les Garçons et Guillaume, à table! (Me Myself and Mum) by Guillaume Gallienne from France. The film also won Prix SACD, which is given by Société des auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques for the best French-language feature film in the Directors’ Fortnight selection.
Les Garçons et Guillaume, à table! by Guillaume Gallienne picked up two awards at Directors’ Fortnight
The Europa Cinemas Label aims to enhance the promotion, circulation and box-office runs of European award-winning films on the screens of a Europe-wide cinema network. The jury, comprised of Europa Cinemas member exhibitors, gave their award to The Selfish Giant by British director Clio Barnard.
Dahus (A Wild Goose Chase) by João Nicolau won the Prix Illy du court métrage for the best short film, with a special mention to Pouco mais de um mês (About a Month) by André Novais Oliveira.
