Golden moment for Chinese director

• Source: Global Times
• [09:36 June 21 2010]
• Comments

Liu Jie accepts a Golden Goblet Award for Best Director at the closing of the 13th annual Shanghai International Film Festival Sunday night at the Shanghai Grand Theatre. Photo: CFP

By Shen Weihuang

The Golden Goblet Award win­ners of the 13th Shanghai Inter­national Film Festival (SIFF) were announced last night without many of the celebrities that normally walk the red car­pet, leaving the city with room to grow its international film scene.

Though it failed to receive the top honor of Best Feature Film, Liu Jie's Deep in the Clouds took most of the spotlight away from the other 15 award nomi­nees, sweeping up three awards at the close of the festival at the Shanghai Grand Theatre.

The 98-minute film took home Best Director, Jury Grand Prix and Best Music.

It tells of a forbidden love story set in a remote village in southwestern Yunnan Prov­ince, where a young man of the Lisu minority pursues a girl de­spite strict traditions that chal­lenge their union, and marks the second time a Chinese has been given Best Director at the event, after Tian Zhuang­zhuang in 2007 for his film The Go Master.

"I am so excited,” said a gra­cious Liu, just after taking the award from famous Chinese film director Jia Zhangke, the man behind 24 Cities. "It's my first time to win such an honor in China; I'd like to thank my team, who I have been working with for over a decade, and of course, my parents."

The awards mark a mile­stone for the 42-year-old from Tianjin, who graduated from Beijing Film Academy. He pre­viously marked his career at the 63rd Venice Film Festival, when he took home an award for his film The Courthouse on the Horseback in 2006.

The other big winner of the evening was Italian film Kiss Me Again. Directed by Gabriele Muccino, it grabbed Best Ac­tress, Best Screenplay, and Best Feature Film.

"The film changed our lives," said Sabrina Impacciatore, one of the leading actresses who re­ceived the awards last night on behalf of Muccino. "We made a film The Last Kiss ten years ago, and the director called us ten years later saying that he would like to see how the characters would have developed."

"The Italian press had preju­dice against us when the film came out," she added. "They said it was only a commercial film, but today, we have proven that they were wrong."

Best Actress went to Kiss Me Again's Vittoria Puccini, which Impacciatore accepted on her behalf. Best Actor went to Christian Ulmen, who was un­able to attend, for Neele Leana's Wedding Fever in Campobello.

With the absence of many award recipients and with few Hollywood A-listers dropping in on the event, the seven-day fes­tival still needs time to mature before it reaches the acclaim of internationally renowned festi­vals like The Cannes Film Fes­tival in France.

Yet with The Pianist's Adrien Brody showing up, and big name Chinese stars like John Woo and Jackie Chan making an appearance, Wang Zheng, director of the Shanghai East Movie Channel said that the fu­ture of the event is promising.

"More films have been join­ing the festival over the past decade, and the quality of films screened has reached that of an international level," said Wang. "The festival is a great chance for Chinese people to see di­verse films from different cul­tures, not just the films that are made in Hollywood."

A record 2,300 some films from over 80 countries applied to be screened at the festival this year that presented over 150 films around the city.