‘Lerd’ tops Un Certain Regard

Taylor Sheridan wins best director

CANNES, France, May 28, (Agencies): An Iranian film-maker who was jailed for “anti-regime propaganda” won the top prize at the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival Saturday.

Mohammad Rasoulof won for “Lerd” about a man working on a goldfish farm in northern Iran who becomes snagged in corrupt ties between the local leaders and businessmen.

Rasoulof, 45, took best director in the same competition six years ago for “Goodbye” while he was in jail.

He had been sentenced to six years in prison in 2010 for making a documentary about protests that followed the disputed re-election of the then Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the previous year.

He was also banned for making films for 20 years, but the sentence was reduced to one year on appeal.

Another of his films, “Manuscripts Don’t Burn”, about authors and activists murdered in the 1980s and 1990s, was shown at Cannes in 2013.

American Taylor Sheridan, whose was nominated for an Oscar last year for his screenplay for the modern Western “Hell or High Water”, won best director for “Wind River”, a crime thriller about an FBI agent investigating a murder on a native American reservation.

Mexican family drama “April’s Daughters” won the runner-up Jury Prize in the section, which showcases more edgy, up-and-coming directors than Cannes’ main competition.

“Barbara”, a biopic about the eponymous 1960s French singer, also won a commendation, while Jasmine Trinca won best actress for her performance as a young divorced mother in Italian drama “Fortunata”.

Meanwhile, “120 Beats Per Minute”, a moving French drama about AIDS activists, won three of the festival’s subsidiary awards, including the critics’ prize.

The FIPRESCI critics’ jury also rewarded the debut Russian feature “Tesnota” by Kantemir Balagov and Portugal’s “A Fabrica de Nada”, about workers who take their factory apart rather than let their jobs go abroad, by Pedro Pinho.

Rasoulof’s win comes three months after Asghar Farhadi won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar for “The Salesman”, also shot in Iran, and recognises him as a major force in international cinema.

“International support has really helped all filmmakers and especially me, by stopping the pressure they were putting on us,” Rasoulof told Reuters in an interview earlier in the festival.

Rasoulof said Iranian authorities had given him a permit to shoot “A Man of Integrity” but only after he signed a paper promising not to make it “too dark”. He has not been granted permission to screen the film in Iran so, like his previous five features, it is unlikely to be seen there except via unauthorised copies.

Variety called “A Man of Integrity” “a tense, enraging drama about corruption and injustice ... a scathing critique of contemporary Iranian society ... (that) manages to resonate on both specific and universal levels”.

Winners

Certain Regard Award: “Lerd,” Mohammad Rasoulof

Best Director: Taylor Sheridan, “Wind River”

Jury Prize: Daughter”

Jury Award for Performance: Jasmine Trinca, “Fortunata”

Poetry of Cinema: Mathieu Amalric, “Barbara”

Michel Franco, “April’s

Roman Polanski, whose 1960s films “Repulsion” and “Rosemary’s Baby” focused on women in mental torment, returns to the same theme in a film that screened at Cannes on Saturday to mixed reviews.

“Based on a True Story” stars Polanski’s wife Emmanuelle Seigner as Delphine, a successful author who makes friends with an overly-keen fan Elle, played by Eva Green, in a relationship that quickly takes on elements of “Single White Female”.

The French-Polish Polanski is still unable to make films in the United States since fleeing the country in 1978 due to fears that a plea bargain with prosecutors over his sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl would be overruled.

But he has continued to have a successful career and remains active at 83, securing a premiere for “Based on a True Story” in an out-of-competition slot at Cannes.

“I have never made a film where there are two principal female characters — it’s always a man and a woman, or two men,” Polanski told a news conference of his French-language movie.

“Here two women oppose each other. It’s fascinating. There are elements that I dealt with in my first films and I was interested to come back to that type of cinema.”

Polanski cast Eva Green — who is French but made her career in Englishspeaking movies, including in the 2006 James Bond film “Casino Royal” — as a character who switches from best friend to violent stalker and back and could ultimately be a figment of Delphine’s imagination.

“You are always asking, does she exist? Doesn’t she exist? And that is a real challenge for an actor — to try to put some flesh on that character,” Green said. “Is she a ghost? That’s the question.” The Hollywood Reporter’s Deborah Young praised “Based on a True Story” as “a masterfully made psychological thriller in the traditional mode”, but Nathalie Simon in Le Figaro called it “grotesque, predictable and funny - not a good sign for a thriller”.

Polanski said Saturday that Netflix and other digital services “don’t pose a basic threat” to moviegoing.

“People want to go to the movies not because of better sound, projection, or seats, but because they want to participate in an experience with an audience around. This is as old as humanity — look at Greek theaters and Roman circus or concerts,” Polanski told reporters at the press conference for his latest film, “Based on a True Story,” which world premieres Saturday in Cannes.

“I remember, when Walkman or tape became popular, people said, ‘This is the end of concerts!’ and draw crowds as big as 100,000 people,” said Polanski, who then joked that “it would be hard to see ‘Borat’ alone. You need to see it in cinema with a laughing audience.”

Polanski explained that he was mainly drawn to directing “Based on a True Story” because it had two female protagonists, played by Emmanuelle Seigner and Eva Green.