South Korean comedy Hahaha (no, we're not laughing, that's the title of the winner!) received the top prize during the Un Certain Regard section of the 63rd annual Cannes Film Festival!
So, Asia picked up its first Cannes honors on Saturday, and director Hong Sangsoo has a lot of reasons to be satisfied. That's why we're here today to have a little chat about his interesting project, and to share the rest of winners in this category…
The latest film by Hong Sang-soo is about “old buddies Mun-kyeong and Jung-sik who reunite after a long time. They realize that they both recently travelled to Tongyeong, where they each got involved in a series of romantic mishaps. It turns out however that they crossed paths with the same people”.
Official Hahaha synopsis: Filmmaker Jo Munkyung plans to leave Seoul to live in Canada. So days before his departure, he meets his close friend Bang Jungshik, who is a film critic.
After a few rounds, they find out coincidentally, they have both been to the same small seaside town Tong-yung recently. They decide to reveal their accounts of the trip over drinks, under the condition that they only stick to pleasant memories.
Not realizing that they were in the same place, at the same time, and with the same people, the two men's reminiscence of a hot summer infolds like a catalogue of memories.
By the director Hong Sangsoo of Tale of Cinema, Woman On The Beach, Night and Day, Like You Know it All.
Movie stars Kim Sang-kyeong, Yoo Joon-sang, Moon So-ri, Ye Ji-won, Kim Kang-woo and Yoon Yeo-jeong.
Just for a record, The Un Certain Regard is a section of the Cannes Film Festival that presents a score of films with unique visions and styles. Each film that is featured is considered to be an original and different piece of work that is seeking global recognition.
This year, Un Certain Regard 2010 presented 19 films directed by 21 directors hailing from 19 different countries and 4 of the works were first films. Presided over by Claire Denis (Director, France), the Jury was comprised of: Helena Lindblad (Critic – Dagens Nyheter, Sweden), Patrick Ferla (Journalist – Radio télévision suisse, Switzerland), Kim Dongho (Pusan Film Festival, South Korea) and Serge Toubiana (General Director of the Cinémathèque Française, France).
While we are still here, we could mention that The Un Certain Regard Jury Prize went to Octubre (or October) from Peru's Daniel and Diego Vega which tells the story of a withdrawn pawnbroker whose neighbor tries to get him to open up emotionally.
Octubre (October) synopsis: Clemente, an extremely quiet pawnbroker, is Sofia's hope to avoid solitude. Being his neighbor and a single woman, she spends her days as an October's Lord of the Miracle's worshipper. One day, Clemente is left with a newborn baby who seems to be the outcome of a sudden relationship with a disappeared prostitute. While Clemente looks for the baby's mother, Sofia enjoys taking care of this baby in Clemente's house and thus discovering her life as a mother. Through the arrival of both of them to his life, Clemente has an opportunity to ponder about the emotional attachments he has never had.
And, for the end, Eva Bianco, Victoria Raposo and Adela Sanchez shared the Best Actress award for their work in Santiago Loza and Ivan Fund's Argentinean drama Los Labios (or The Lips), a story about the complex relationships among three women who travel to a distant place to do welfare work.
Los Labio (The Lips) synopsis: Three women travel to a distant place to do welfare work. They assist, listen, stay with the unprotected. An old hospital in ruins accommodates them. The imposed group life gets more complex as they start to know each other. The relationship with the others, the community, is also difficult. But, as days go by, they will start to melt into that human landscape surrounding them. To be part of the mystery of otherness.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvGA-S6ANKg[/youtube] Hahaha trailer
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FFBpqT0UIE[/youtube] Los Labio (The Lips) trailer
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_iAJ1-dWyY[/youtube] Octubre (October) trailer
