Hong Kong Movie Wins Cannes Short Film Prize

Hong Kong’s “All The Crows In The World” on Sunday took home the award for best short film at the prestigious Cannes film festival.

The 14-minute long movie from director Tang Yi draws on an experience she had as a teenager, and tells the story of a high school girl who gets invited by her cousin to a mysterious adult party.

Last month, Tang won the Best Director and Best Screenplay prizes for her film at Hong Kong’s Fresh Wave International Short Film Festival Awards.

Accepting her award, she thanked Fresh Wave and Hong Kong Arts Development Council for funding the film “with no pressure”.

The winner of the top Palme d’Or prize at Cannes went to shock-fest “Titane” from director Julie Ducournau.

Ducournau is only the second woman to scoop the prize, for a movie that was one of the wildest, sexiest and most violent ever shown at the Cannes film festival.

It tells the story of a young woman who has sex with cars, kills without a care, and pretends to be a boy despite being pregnant by a vintage Cadillac.

Lee, the first black man to lead the jury, read out the winner at the very start of the prize section, rather than introducing the first award of the night for best actor.

Ducournau broke into tears when the official announcement was made later, and told the crowd: "This evening has been perfect because it's been imperfect.

"Thank you for letting the monsters in."

The only other woman to win the top prize is Jane Campion for "The Piano" in 1993.

The second-prize Grand Prix was shared between Iran's two-time Oscar winner Asghar Farhadi ("A Hero") and Finland's Juho Kuosmanen ("Compartment No.6"), while best screenplay went to Japan's Hamaguchi Ryusuke and Takamasa Oe for "Drive My Car".

The race had been wide open this year, with critics pointing to many possible successors to "Parasite", the South Korean hit which took home the last Palme in 2019 before making history by triumphing at the Oscars.

Last year's festival was cancelled because of the pandemic. (Additional reporting by AFP)

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