Quebec director sweeps awards for gay coming-of-age movie

Quebec filmmaker Xavier Dolan swept three of the four prizes Friday at the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight for his film I Killed My Mother (J’ai tue ma mere).

The 20-year-old’s first feature won the Art Cinema Award, given by an international jury of independent cinema programmers and the SACD Prize for best French-language film.

Dolan also won the Regards Jeunes 2009 Prize, given to a first film by a jury of young cinephiles.

The remaining prize, the Europa Cinemas Label, was given to the Austrian movie La Pivellina by Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel.

The Montrealer wrote and directed the coming-of-age movie, which is about a 16-year-old boy just discovering his gay sexuality and fighting with his mother, who constantly annoys him.

The film was one of the most talked about titles of the Directors’ Fortnight — a sidebar of the Cannes Film Festival — and its first screening was greeted with a standing ovation.

Dolan, who has compared his Cannes experience to a fairy tale, said the awards left him speechless.

“I’m completely flabbergasted, we never thought we would win a prize,” Dolan told the French language all-news network RDI.

“I can’t begin to tell you how moving this is,” he added.

See Quebec director sweeps awards for gay coming-of-age movie Canada.com

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Chinese director Lou Ye braves ban risk at Cannes

Chinese director Lou Ye brushed off fears he may face problems with the authorities when he returns home after showing his new film “Spring Fever” at the Cannes film festival.
The film, a graphic drama that deals with the taboo subject of homosexuality, was shot in secret after officials slapped a five-year banning order on Lou preventing him from making films following his last feature “Summer Palace.”
That film, shown in Cannes in 2006, examined the protest movement that led to the brutal repression in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and earned Lou international acclaim as well as ostracism from the official world of Chinese cinema.
But speaking on Thursday after the press screening of “Spring Fever,” he played down the furor that has surrounded both the film’s subject matter and his problems with the powerful Chinese Film Office.
See Chinese director Lou Ye braves ban risk at Cannes
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