Surreal Thai film wins Cannes gold for Asia

Thailand's Apichatpong Weerasethakul on Sunday took the Palme d'Or top prize at the Cannes film festival with a surreal and hypnotic meditation on reincarnation set in the jungle.Spanish actor Javier Bardem and Italy's Elio Germano shared the best actor award and France's Juliette Binoche won the best actress prize for her role as an unhappy art dealer in Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami's film "Certified Copy".

The Thai film "Uncle Boonmee" won the top honor at the Cannes Film Festival. Academy Award winners Juliette Binoche and Javier Bardem earned acting honors.

The Thai film "Uncle Boonmee" won the top honor at the Cannes Film Festival. Academy Award winners Juliette Binoche and Javier Bardem earned acting honors.

2001: Thai film "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall his Past Lives" wins the top prize of the 2010 Cannes Film Festival!The film's director Apichatpong Weerasethakul admits he is nervous and says the experience has been surreal. He adds that he would like to kiss all the jury members, especiallly Tim Burton, whose hairstyle "I really like".He ends by dedicating the prize to his fellow countrymen. Just as the music starts up, he hastens to add he also wants to thank his parents. 2000: And now for the highlight of the night: the Palme d'Or goes to...

For the last week and a half, people in Cannes have been trying to figure out the tastes of Steven Spielberg’s jury – and now that the festival is reaching a conclusion without any one film asserting itself the way “Amour” did last year or “The Tree of Life” the year before, the guessing game has gotten more difficult and more feverish.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul may have boosted Thai national pride with his surprise win at Cannes, but the avant-garde director says he has no illusions his surreal film will be a hit back home.Despite clinching the top Palme d'Or prize last month as violence erupted in Bangkok, he's reluctant to screen the reincarnation tale "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives" for the action and comedy-loving Thai audience.

Thai arthouse director Apichatpong Weerasethakul slammed the country's tough censorship rules as his latest movie entered the race for the top Cannes film festival award on Friday.Acclaimed by many Western film critics for his "auteur" offerings, his latest movie "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives" is a parable "on a cinema that's also dying or dead", he said."But you cannot blame Thai film-makers," he said at a press conference. "They cannot do anything because of these censorship laws."

Iran's Abbas Kiarostami shaped up as a possible two-time winner of the Cannes film festival's top prize Monday with his first film shot in Europe."Certified Copy," starring French actress Juliette Binoche, won a round of enthusiastic applause at a packed press screening here a day before its red carpet premiere.Kiarostami, 69, who won the Palme d'Or in 1997 with "Taste of Cherry," cast English opera singer William Shimell, who had never previously acted in a film, as the male lead in a bleak tale set in Italy's Tuscany region.