Cannes 2010: Post-awards press conferences

IndieMovies was at the Palais in Cannes for the last time this year, to catch the jury and prize-winners' press conferences after the awards had been announced. It all wrapped up about two hours ago and here's our report on the post-awards chatter.

Most of the questions were directed to Tim Burton, the head of this year's jury. The first was regarding the criteria by which the (exhausted looking)  jurors had selected the winners. Burton characerised it as a “hard process”, going on to say: “It's an unusual experience. It's all debate: that's the point of it.”

From what we can gather, the jurors were championing favourite films and the final decisions were not easy to reach, involving a little compromise and a lot of discussion. Kate Beckinsale joked that they had tried to create more prizes – and in fact this was the case as two actors, Javier Bardem (Biutiful) and Elio Germano (La Nostra Vita) unusually shared the best actor award for what Burton described as "two very different performances". Indeed, when he was fielding questions later, Bardem seemed more than cheerful on this point and happily acknowledged his co-awardee.

He said, “I feel very honoured, very surprised. I am taking this as a representative of the movie”, a project he was clearly proud of (though IndieMovies felt that his performance was easily the stand out aspect of the film). Juliette Binoche, discussing her best actress win, praised her director Abbas Kiarostami's “good will camera”, adding “the fact that he's Iranian and filming a woman the way he did with me was overwhelming.”

Tim Burton identified a key theme in this year's festival as family, which played a part in the Palme D'Or winner, Uncle Boonme Who Can Recall His Past Lives. Benicio del Toro said of the film that he “liked the way he [Apichatpig Weerasethakul] dealt with the biggest mystery there is – death” and Burton described the director's work as “a beautiful dream”. Shekhar Kapur weighed in too, saying Weerasethakul showed “incredible compassion” in his filmmaking. He described the Palme D'Or winner as a “beautiful experience that drew us in and asked us to ask all these questions of ourselves.”

Tournée (The Tour), for which Mathieu Almaric won the best director prize, was praised by Burton for its “vitality”. And when Almaric took to the stage later, he said he was chiefly delighted that the burlesque performers had been in Cannes and at the awards ceremony to celebrate with him, saying that he “stole their energy” to make the film. Un Homme Qui Crie (A Screaming Man) was compared by juror Alexandre Desplat to a Greek tragedy which refused to redeem its protagonist.

One question that drew murmurs of assent from the assembled press was regarding the absence of Mike Leigh's Another Year (a film that IndieMovies particularly enjoyed). Beckinsale at this point confessed to a “slight nausea” when thinking of favourite films that they had not been able to honour.

But some of the most interesting points were made by Apichatpig Weerasethakul, director of the Palme D'Or winning film, Uncle Boonme Who Can Recall His Past Lives, when he arrived to take questions at the end. He was almost unable to make it to the awards because of the difficult political situation in his home country of Thailand. He said, “To have this award means a lot to me. Thailand needs some hope in other ways as we are so serious and depressed about the politics.” He said he hoped the film and its attendant award would be “cool water to calm down the situation.” He also expressed surprise “that there is recognition for this type of cinema” and echoed Tim Burton's earlier expressed sentiments that the world is getting smaller and more Westernised when he said: “We have become a monoculture... We need diversity in the moving image. I try to present a different kind of cinema that pushes the boundaries and challenges audiences.”

His thoughtful comments neatly answered a (pretty daft) question which suggested that the more political films has been overlooked for prizes. Beckinsale said that there were some “serious politicos” on the jury and that they had in no way avoided these issues. In any case, under Burton's leadership in Cannes 2010, fantasy filmaking has become an expression of the political.