Names and faces
Oscar- winning actress Susan Sarandon is urging tourists to go to Nepal, where two powerful earthquakes in the past month killed thousands of people and raised concerns that the nation’s vital tourism industry could be seriously hurt. Sarandon was in Nepal for five days, staying with the famed kung- fu nuns in a Buddhist monastery and later in an orphanage that was damaged in one of the quakes. “It is very, very important to keep all these jobs alive,” Sarandon said Sunday of the tourism industry. Sarandon inaugurated a campaign to build 201 huts for villagers outside the capital, Kathmandu, who lost their homes in one of the earthquakes. “I think that would be the next wave — to think of Nepal not as an ongoing disaster, but as a country that has found its way back.” A pair of powerful quakes struck Nepal, on April 25 and May 12, killing more than 8,600 people. Nepal gets about half a million tourists every year, with many arriving to trek the Himalayan nation’s scenic mountain trails.
Jacques Audiard’s Sri Lankan refugee drama Dheepan on Sunday won the Palme d’Or, the top honor of the Cannes Film Festival. The f i lm was selected by a jury led by Joel and Ethan Coen. Dheepan is about a trio of Sri Lankans who pretend to be a family to flee their war- torn country for a housing project in France. “To receive a prize from the Coen brothers is exceptional,” Audiard said. The runner- up prize, the Grand Prix, went to Son of Saul, a Holocaust drama by first- time Hungarian director Laszlo Nemes. Hou Hsiao- Hsien, the 68- yearold Taiwanese filmmaker, won best director for his first feature in eight years, The Assassin, a martialarts drama. The best actress prize was split between Rooney Mara, half of the romantic pair of Todd Haynes’ 1950s lesbian drama Carol, and Emmanuelle Bercot, the French star of the marriage drama My King. Best actor was awarded to Vincent Lindon, the veteran French actor of Stephane Brize’s The Measure of a Man. In it, he plays a man struggling to make a living after a long period of unemployment. Yorgos Lanthimos, a Greek filmmaker working in English for the first time, took the jury prize for The Lobster, a dystopian comedy starring Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz, about a near- future when unmarried singles are turned into the animals of their choice.