San Sebastián Film Festival Awards - 2004 Winners
by Andre Soares
Shot a mere month after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime, Bahman Ghobadi’s Turtles Can Fly won the Golden Shell at the 52nd edition of the San Sebastián Film Festival.
According to Reuters, Peruvian author and chairman of the jury Mario Vargas Llosa stated that although the decision was not unanimous, Turtles Can Fly had "moved us all, not only because of the terrible conditions in which it was filmed, but also because . . . despite the tragedy which it recounts, it is filled with humanity, poetry and even humor."
Set in Iraq’s Kurdistan right before the beginning of the U.S.-led invasion of that country, Turtles Can Fly tells the story of several Iraqi villagers who desperately try to set up a satellite dish as they await the beginning of the war. Among the picture’s amateur cast are four war-scarred children, one of which is armless and another blind. (The blind kid has since undergone an operation and reportedly can now see.)
"I filmed my third feature film after a journey to Iraq," the Kurdish-Iranian Ghobadi was quoted in the El Mundo website, "with the people and scenes which I found there. My script consisted of three pages of key words: ‘refugee camp’, ‘misery’, ‘war’, ‘abuse.’"
Other winners at San Sebastián were Ulrich Thomsen, chosen best actor for his work in the Danish film Brødre / Brothers, a military story set in Afghanistan. Connie Nielsen, who plays the soldier’s wife, won as best actress. China’s Xu Jinglei won the best director award for Yi geng mo sheng nu ren de lai xin / Letter from an Unknown Woman, an adaptation of the Stefan Zweig’s novel about a man in the late 1940s who learns he is the father of a child from a short-lived romance with a woman he doesn’t remember. Jinglei also co-produced and stars in the film. (In 1948, Max Ophüls filmed the story in Hollywood with Joan Fontaine and Louis Jourdan. A 2001 Franco-German made-for-TV version stars Irène Jacob and Christopher Thompson.)
The jury’s special award went to Serbia & Montenegro’s Goran Paskaljevic for San zimske noci (translated as "A Winter Night’s Dream"), a tale of Bosnian war refugees who have taken over the vacant apartment of a Serb. Problems ensue when the Serbian returns home to resume his life after a ten-year absence.
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