Romanian Filmmaker Takes Cannes Top Prize

Palme d'Or Ceremony Wraps 60th Annual Film Festival

(AP)  Romanian director Cristian Mungiu won the Cannes Film Festival's top prize Sunday with "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," a harrowing portrait of an illegal abortion in Communist-era Romania.

The low-budget, naturalistic film about a student who goes through horrors to ensure that her friend can have a secret abortion beat out 21 other movies in competition for the Riviera festival's top prize, the Palme d'Or -including films by well-known directors like Quentin Tarantino, the Coen brothers and Wong Kar-wai.

Mungiu, who was awarded the prize by actress Jane Fonda, said he did not have the idea for the film a year ago, and did not even have money to shoot it just six months ago. He hoped the win would be "good news for the small filmmakers from small countries."

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Photos: The Palme d'Or & More

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"You don't necessarily need a big budget and big stars to tell a story that everyone will listen to," said 39-year-old Mungiu, the first Romanian to win Cannes' top prize.

The movie lineup for Cannes' 60th anniversary edition was weighty, with recurring themes like death, abortion, loss and aging, and the awards announced by jury president Stephen Frears ("The Queen") reflected that.

While Mungiu's film was a favorite with critics, the grand prize, considered the festival's No. 2 award, was a surprise. It went to Japanese director Naomi Kawase's "Mogari No Mori" (The Mourning Forest), a movie about two people - a retirement home resident and a caretaker at the center - struggling to overcome the deaths of loved ones.

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The Winner's List

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The prize for best director went to American painter-director Julian Schnabel for his French-language film "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," based on a memoir by a French magazine editor who became paralyzed after a stroke and learned to write again by painstakingly blinking his eyelid. The movie is Schnabel's third, after "Basquiat" and "Before Night Falls."

The jury awarded a special prize for Cannes' 60th anniversary to
Gus Van Sant, who won the festival's top prize in 2003 for "Elephant."

The "Good Will Hunting" director's impressionistic "Paranoid Park" focuses on a teenage skateboarder whose life turns upside down when he accidentally kills a security guard. Van Sant recruited untrained actors on MySpace.com and shot the film in just a few weeks.

Two films shared the jury prize: "Persepolis," Marjane Satrapi's moving, funny adaptation of her graphic novels about growing up during and after Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, which she co-directed with Vincent Paronnaud; and "Stellet Licht" (Silent Light), Carlos Reygadas' tale of forbidden love set among Mennonite farmers of northern Mexico.

Acting honors went to Russia's Konstantin Lavronenko, who played a troubled husband in "The Banishment," a Russian drama about a couple whose marriage disintegrates during a stay in the country.

South Korea's Jeon Do-yeon won the award for best actress for her role as a widow struggling to cope with her husband's death in "Secret Sunshine."