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Cannes Film Festival 2007Sunday, May 27, 2007—Today wrapped up the end of the 60th annual Cannes Film Festival with a screening of Denys Arcand’s lighthearted comedy ironically named Days of Darkness (after nearly two weeks of showcasing mostly heavy and dark films), as well as a special red carpet closing ceremony. The festival, which is held annually at the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès in Cannes, France, is considered one of the most prestigious international film festivals in the entire world. Cannes began on May 16th this year with the film opener My Blueberry Nights (by Wong Kar Wai), which is essentially a romantic drama featuring a young woman, Elizabeth, played by jazz musician Norah Jones in her debut starring role in a feature film, on a journey across the US to resolve her questions about love. Along the way, she meets a string of characters, played by veteran actors Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Rachel Weisz, Tim Roth, and David Strathairn. Both opener My Blueberry Nights and closer Days of Darkness (French title: L’âge des ténèbres), a film about a bored and unappreciated suburban civil servant—Jean-Marc, played by Marc Labreche—who has a very vivid fantasy life, which includes himself as a hero and an actress played by Diane Kruger, were not a part of the competition. This year saw 22 international films, including 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Romania), Breath (South Korea), Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof (US), Import/Export (Austria), Paranoid Park (France/US), and Promise Me This (France/Serbia), among others, competing for the festival’s prizes, the most distinguished and prestigious of which is the Palme d’Or (“Golden Palm”) for the best film. This year, the best film award went to the weighty, hard-hitting, Cristian Mungiu-directed Romanian film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days prior to today’s closing ceremony. The film was set near the end of the communist era in Romania and centered on illegal abortion.
A Palme d’Or of lifetime achievement was also awarded to veteran American actress Jane Fonda. Other Cannes Film Festival awards include the Grand Prix (considered Cannes’ second highest honor), which went to the Japanese flick Mogari No Mori, directed by Naomi Kawase; Best Actress to Jeon Do-yeon in Secret Sunshine and Best Actor to Konstantin Lavronenko in The Banishment. Best Director went to American Julian Schnabel for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and Best Screenplay went to the German-Turkish film The Edge of Heaven. The Jury Award is shared this year by both Persepolis and Stellet Licht (Silent Light). Other parts of the festival included competition shorts (short films and pieces competing for prizes), “un certain regard,” a secondary Cannes competition, and special screenings, including Cannes classics, 60th anniversary tributes, midnight screenings, and “gala” screenings, which this year included Steven Soderbergh’s comedy-crime caper Ocean’s Thirteen, featuring the all-star “manly” lineup of George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Elliott Gould, Al Pacino, Don Cheadle, Bernie Mac, Scott Caan, and Carl Reiner, and then essentially the “lonely only” female, actress Ellen Barkin. The jury members for the international competition of features films for 2007 were British director Stephen Frears (the jury president), Italian director Marco Bellocchio, Hong Kong actress Maggie Cheung, Australian actress Toni Collette, Portuguese actress Maria de Medeiros, Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, French actor Michel Piccoli, Canadian actress Sarah Polley, and Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako. —Carla Lowe
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