Leigh takes top prizes at Venice Film Festival with abortion movie
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Mike Leigh, one of Britain&#39;s best known and controversial film-makers, was celebrating a double triumph at the Venice film festival last night when his latest film won the Golden Lion prize
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Films about euthanasia, abortion and the hardships of immigrant life bagged the top prizes at the 17th European Film Awards on Saturday.
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Director Tim Burton is honoured with a career award at the Venice Film Festival.
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The Chinese movie "Sanxia Haoren," or "Still Life," on Saturday took this year's Golden Lion, the top award at the Venice Film Festival.
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Dame Helen Mirren's latest film The Queen is among the favourites to win at the Venice Film Festival.
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Actress Keira Knightley's forthcoming film Atonement is selected to open this year's Venice Film Festival.
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4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days...and one winner.After 12 days of black-tie screenings, Brangelina and Michael Moore, the 60th edition of the Cannes Film Festival wrapped by bestowing the coveted Palm d&#39;Or on Romanian director Cristian Mungui&#39;s abortion film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.The naturalistic drama following two students who must contend with an unwanted pregnancy in the waning days of the Ceausescu regime, beat out 21 other films in competition, including Wong Kar-Wai&#39;s Cannes opener My Blueberry Nights, Emir Kustirica&#39;s Promise Me This, Quentin Tarantino&#39;s Death Proof, the Coen brothers No Country for Old Men and Russian auteur Alexander Sokurov&#39;s Alexandra.Mungui, who received the fest&#39;s top prize from Jane Fonda (in town to accept a lifetime achievement award), said he was humbled that his entry, made on a fairly low budget, was singled out amid works from some of the world&#39;s top filmmakers.&#34;It looks a little bit to me like [a] fairytale,&#34; he said during Sunday&#39;s awards ceremony, adding that &#34;you don&#39;t need big budgets and big stars to make stories.&#34;Earning Cannes&#39; runner-up trophy, the Grand Prize, was Japanese director Naomi Kawase&#39;s The Mourning Forest, about the journey of a caregiver and her elderly patient who wind up stranded in the woods after setting out on a drive in the country.Best Director went to Julian Schnabel for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the harrowing story of a 43-year-old French journalist whose entire body was paralyzed by a massive stroke except his left eye, which he subsequently used to blink out a memoir composed entirely in his head.Cannes&#39; third-place award, the Jury Prize, was a tie between Persepolis, an animated feature by first-time French-Iranian director Marjane Satrapi, and Silent Night by Mexican director Carlos Reygadas. The former is the filmmaker&#39;s autobiographical account of growing up under fundamentalist rule in Iran and features voice work by French acting goddess Catherine Deneuve. The latter explores a father&#39;s faith after he falls for another woman.Russia&#39;s Konstantin Lavronenko as named Best Actor for his role in The Banishment, while South Korean Jeon Do-yeon was named Best Actress for he comedy romance Secret Sunshine.Gus Van Sant, a Palm d&#39;Or winner in 2003 for his high school drama Elephant, was given a special 60th Anniversary Prize for Paranoid Park, about a Portland skateboarder whose life is turned upside down after he accidentally kills a security guard.Turkish-German filmmaker Fatih Akin, who won the Golden Bear at the 2004 Berlin Film Festival with the hard-hitting love story Head On, scored Best Screenplay Award for his latest, The Edge of Heaven.Walking away with the Camera d&#39;Or, which honors a first-time filmmaker, was the Israeli husband and wife team of Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen for Meduzot. The short film prize went to Watching It Rain by Elisa Miller of Mexico.As for Fonda, Cannes festival head Gilles Jacob paid tribute to her status as a film icon and her anti-war activism by bestowing her with a surprise Palm d&#39;Or for lifetime achievement. Fonda is just the fourth recipient of the honor, following French filmmakers Alain Resnais and G&eacute;rard Oury and French actress Jeanne Moreau.&#34;I never imagined that the Cannes film festival would honor a person who was spied on and tracked by the FBI, a person who has a 20,000-page file,&#34; Jacob said, noting the Georgia Rule star&#39;s stance against the Vietnam War and the U.S. invasion of Iraq.&#160; &#34;You are a woman who fights and wins.&#34;In a nod to her famous father, the award was handed out following a screening of Sidney Lumet&#39;s classic courtroom melodrama 12 Angry Men, starring her Oscar-winning dad, Henry Fonda.The 69-year-old Jane Fonda was accompanied by daughter Vanessa, whom she had with French helmer Roger Vadim.&#34;I have the feeling my father is with me tonight. The whole Fonda family thanks you,&#34; she said in French, then commented on the influence the elder Fonda had on her. &#34;He loved progressive films and those films taught me the important things: justice, democracy...I feel inspired by and proud of the heritage he left us.&#34;While last year&#39;s Cannes helped to launch Al Gore&#39;s An Inconvenient Truth, 2007 will likely go down as the year of Sicko, Michael Moore&#39;s latest polemic on the current health-care crisis in the U.S.The firebrand filmmaker debuted Sicko out of competition and the expos&eacute; received a standing ovation from the Croisette crowd. Moore has always been a hit, with 2002&#39;s Bowling for Columbine winning the 55th Anniversary Prize and 2004&#39;s Fahrenheit 9/11 becoming the first doc ever to win the Palm d&#39;Or.As always, the&#160; was thick with A-listers, among them George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Don Cheadle, who used their Ocean&#39;s Thirteen screening and a benefit to put the spotlight to raise more than $8 million (with a $1 million donation from Steven Spielberg) to aid victims of the genocide in Darfur.Pitt also coproduced A Mighty Heart, featuring a star turn by wife Angelina Jolie. The  Michael Winterbottom-helmed film dramatized the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl by Al Qaeda terrorists and the strength of his widow, Mariane, played by Jolie.This year&#39;s jury was headed by Oscar-nominated British director, Stephen Frears (The Queen), and the jury included Aussie actress Toni Colette, Hong Kong star Maggie Cheung, French screen star Michel Piccoli and Nobel Prize-winning Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk.Get more E! Online Cannes coverage from Reel Girl and check out the hottest pics from the Croisette in our Cannes photo gallery.
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The awards success of abortion drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days indicates that Romanian cinema has come of age.
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VENICE (Italy) Sept 12 - A foreign clean sweep of the top awards at the 61st Venice International Film Festival, including the Golden Lion for British film ``Vera Drake&#39;&#39;, disappointed Italian critics who had campaigned for the first ``home&#39;&#39; Golden Lion
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Mike Leigh's moving portrayal of a  back-street abortionist in 1950s London swept the British  Independent Film Awards late Tuesday, taking six awards,  including Best Film and Best Director.
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British film Atonement, starring Keira Knightley, is to raise the curtain on the Venice Film Festival.
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Mike Leigh's abortion film Vera Drake wins six prizes at the British Independent Film Awards.
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Taiwan was flushed with pride on Sunday  as favorite son and world famous director Ang Lee took Venice  film festival&#39;s top award for his steamy thriller &quot;Lust,  Caution,&quot; just two years after winning with &quot;Brokeback  Mountain.&quot;
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A quirky comedy about an unwanted teenage pregnancy wins the top prize at the Rome film festival.
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Films competing for the top prize at Venice Film Festival will receive their world premiere at the event.
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With an acceptance speech that included a dig at the Cannes Film Festival, Mike Leigh&#39;s &quot;Vera Drake&quot; won the Leone d&#39;Oro for best film, closing out a controversial edition of the Venice Film Festival marked with some organizational snafus.
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"Juno," the story of an American teenager  dealing with an unplanned pregnancy, won the best film award at  the Rome film festival on Saturday.