Alternative Film Guide

At a awards ceremony yesterday, Sept. 30, the 54th Donostia-San Sebastián Film Festival’s Golden Shell was given to two films: Niwemang / Half Moon (Iran-Iraq-Austria-France), which also took the International Film Critics’ FIPRESCI Award, and Mon fils à moi / My Son (France).

Directed by Bahman Ghobadi, Half Moon follows an old Kurdish-Iranian musician on his way to a performance in Iraq’s Kurdistan. Martial Fougeron’s Mon fils à moi is a coming-of-age story revolving around a dysfunctional mother-son relationship. As the doting mother, veteran Nathalie Baye (who earlier this year won the French Academy’s Best Actress César for Le Petit lieutenant) won the Silver Shell for Best Actress.

Tom DiCillo won two awards, as Best Director and for Best Screenplay for Delirious (USA), the tale of an ambitious small-time photographer starring Steve Buscemi. (One of those strange festival deals: The best-directed and best-written film failed to win the Best Film award.)

Veteran Spanish performer Juan Diego was the Best Actor for Vete de mí / Leave Me (Spain), in which he plays the harried father of an immature 30-year-old, while the Special Jury Prize went to Carlos Sorin’s El Camino de San Diego / The Road to San Diego (Argentina), about the tribulations encountered by a small-town man on his way to meeting his idol, soccer player Diego Maradona, who has been hospitalized in Buenos Aires.

Veteran French actress Jeanne Moreau was the head of the jury. Other jury members included Brazilian director Bruno Barreto, Spanish director Isabel Coixet, and Portuguese writer José Saramago.

Full list of San Sebastián Film Festival winners

Norway, Sweden, Denmark Pick Oscar Entries

Almodóvar’s VOLVER is Spain’s Submission for the 2006 Oscars

Review: DRIVING LESSONS (2006)

Mexico, Vietnam, and Thailand Submit Films for the Academy Awards

Foreign Language and Short Film Oscar Entries Due October 2

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