Turkey's harrowing 'Winter Sleep' takes top prize at Cannes

By Michael Roddy and Alexandria Sage

CANNES France Sat May 24, 2014 4:52pm EDT

1 of 2. I am sure this post has touched all theinternet viewers, its really really fastidious articleon building up new weblog. Some extremely validpoints! I appreciate you writing this post plus therest of the site is also very good.Director NuriBilge Ceylan (C), Palme d'Or award winner forhis film 'Winter Sleep', poses on stage

surrounded by director Quentin Tarantino (L) and actress Uma Thurman (R) during the closingceremony of the 67th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes May 24, 2014.

Credit: Reuters/Yves Herman

CANNES France (Reuters) - Turkish film "Winter Sleep" examining the huge divide between rich andpoor and the powerful and powerless in Turkey won the Palme d'Or award for the best film fordirector Nuri Bilge Ceylan on Saturday at the 67th Cannes International Film Festival.

Ceylan's three-hour-plus dark and atmospheric film was only the second Turkish movie to win thetop award at the world's most prestigious film festival, and the director noted that it came on the100th anniversary year of Turkish film.

He dedicated cara diet sehat dan cepat the honor to "those who lost their lives during the last year",adding that he was referring to the youth of his country and to unrest in Turkey.

"These young people actually taught us a lot of things. Some of them sacrificed their lives in a wayfor us," Ceylan said later at a news conference.

"Le Meraviglie" (The Wonders) by Italian director Alice Rohrwacher took the second-place prize fora coming-of-age story set in the Tuscan countryside as a family tries to eke out a bohemian lifemaking honey.

Twenty-five-year-old Canadian director Xavier Dolan's film "Mommy" shared the third-place prizewith octogenarian French director Jean-Luc Godard's "Adieu au Langage" (Goodbye to Language)that uses 3D imagery to stunning effect.

An emotional Dolan said he thought the jury may have twinned him with Godard, an inventor of the"New Wave" film, "because of our respective searches for freedom in cinema".

American director Bennett Miller won the best director award for "Foxcatcher", British actorTimothy Spall won best actor for Mike Leigh's film "Mr Turner" and Julianne Moore was named bestactress in David Cronenberg's "Maps to the Stars".

Spall, best known to cinema audiences as Peter Pettigrew in the "Harry Potter" films, said he feltproud to win the award.

"I'm like a bewildered 16-year-old girl, or boy," he said. "I'm so astounded by this award, it'samazing."

"Leviathan" by Russia's Andrei Zvyagintsev took the prize for best screenplay.

"It was an extremely diverse ensemble " - films that were classical, films that were radical, films thatwere about the future of cinema," jury member and Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn said afterthe awards were city of wonder.

Hollywood Reporter critic Stuart Kemp told Reuters there were no surprises with the awards goingto predictable places".

Critics had applauded the "Winter Sleep" as one of the standout films in a festival that wassomewhat short on fireworks, with the French newspaper Le Monde calling it "magnificent".

Variety critic Justin Chang called it a "sprawling, character-rich portrait of a self-absorbed Anatolianhotelier and his uneasy relationships with those around him".

The only other Turkish film to win the Palme was Yilmaz Guney and Serif Goren's "The Way" (1982).

Jury head Jane Campion said she had been daunted by the running length of three hours and 16minutes but said "it had such a beautiful rhythm ... I could have stayed there a couple more hours".

"The real gift of this film is how honest it is," she said.

Campion, the only woman to have won the Palme d'Or, said it had not mattered to her or the jurywhether a man or woman won.

"It never entered our discussions the gender of the filmmaker that won," Campion said. "These filmswere on equal basis with each other. We didn't go, 'Oh my God, was this made by a woman or amanh' We were moved and responded to the film."

ALMOST CLAUSTROPHOBIC

Despite its setting in the vast Anatolian steppe, the film's atmosphere is almost claustrophobic as itshows a rich man and former actor named Aydin (Haluk Bilginer) who uses his intellect and positionto bully his tenants and beat his wife and sister into intellectual submission.

Ceylan was peppered with questions during the festival about a recent coalmine disaster in Turkey,and about unrest and whether his film was trying to explore these themes.

He said current events were important for him, but what his films were really about was " humannature".

"I can find enough motivation only if I make movies about the human nature," he said. "Mymotivation and starting point is to try to understand the dark side of my soul " and that means "human nature " as well."

British film critic Richard Mowe, who served on the Cannes Jury Directors, said the centenaryscholarships of Turkish film might have been a consideration in the award to Ceylan, but he doubtedthat the Palme d'Or would boost its commercial potential.

"It's a hard film to get into cinemas because you can't even describe what it's about in an easy way -it's all very metaphysical and metaphorical," Mowe said.

This year's festival had its share of glitz and glamour, with Nicole Kidman playing Grace Kelly in"Grace of Monaco," the widely panned film that opened the festival but was not in competition.

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Those making a requisite turn down the red carpet flanked by tuxedo-wearing photographersincluded Sophia Loren, Sharon Stone, Aishwarya Rai, Uma Thurman and John Travolta, EvaLongoria, Naomi Watts and Jessica Chastain.

(Additional reporting by Alexandria Sage; Writing by Michael Roddy; Editing by Gunna Dickson)

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