Dresen, Kim top Un Certain Regard

Dresen, Kim

CANNES -- Andreas Dresen's "Stopped on Track" and Kim Ki-duk "Arirang" shared Cannes' Un Certain Regard Prize Saturday, section's top plaudit.Currently appealing a seven-year prison sentence, Iran's Mohammad Rasoulof took best director for "Good Bye." Russia's Andrei Zvyagintsev's "Elena," one of the section's best-received films by critics, won Un Certain Regard's Special Jury Prize.The top honor double whammy - for which the Emir Kusturica-led jury had to seek authorization from Cannes Festival authorities ? prizes two highly different films."Track," Dresen's naturalistic chronicle of a dying's man's last few months and his wife's attempts to cope, was a hard-to-dislike entry which many critics' found heart-wrenching. Starring Milan Peschel and Steffi Kuhnert, it was likened by some critics to the films of Mike Leigh in its extensive use of thesp-improvisation and non-pro actors ? even real-life medics - in secondary roles. The latest from one of Asia's most celebrated auteurs, Kim's docu/fiction feature "Arirang" has Kim bearing his soul to the camera, holed up in a shack, having abandoned commercial film-making after a near fatal accident on 2008's "Dream." "Arirang" split Cannes scribes. It was written-off by some critics ? Variety called it "one long whine" ? but revered by others as a thought-provoking reflection on the filmmaking's profession.The really eye-catching plaudit, however, was Rasoulof's best director nod. That will raise the status of a filmmaker who has somewhat lived in the shadow of Abbas Kiarostami and Jafar Panahi as he, like Panahi, appeals a seven-year prison sentence and a 20-year filmmaking ban imposed by Iranian authorities. Shot in semi-clandestinity, according to Cannes Festival sources, "Good Bye," which is less oblique than Rasoulof's earlier films, turns on a young pregnant lawyer, banned from work, who's desperately tries to obtain an exit-visa to leave Iran.With Rasoulof forbidden to leave Iran, his award was picked up by his wife. Closing Un Certain Regard, "Elena," from Andrei Zvyagintsev ("The Return"), is a chilling drama of a family torn apart in new Russia. Reviewing this year's Un Certain Regard after Saturday's prize announcements, Cannes delegate general Thierry Fremaux said the section was "Almost reaching my goal" of having "two film publishing houses with two kinds of collections." Un Certain Regard is "not second league but really different. Many of its films could have played Competition," he added.

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