San Sebastian. Awards.

As Harold Heckle reports for the AP, the San Sebastian Film Festival has wrapped with a slew of awards (you can download a 5-page list right there from top of the site's homepage). Because many of the winners screened in Toronto, we already know a bit about them, so let's take a look.

Winners of the Golden Shell for Best Film and Silver Shell for Best Actor are Wayne Wang's A Thousand Years of Good Prayers and its lead, Henry O.

A few voices from Toronto:

• "Meticulously paced and beautifully shot, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers brings us into the life of Mr Shi (Henry O) at the moment he walks into a train station in Spokane, Washington, where he is greeted with seeming lack of affection by his adult daugher, Yilan (Faye Yu)," writes Kim Voynar at Cinematical. "Director Wayne Wang, getting back into indie film after making films like Maid in Manhattan and Because of Winn-Dixie, has made a lovely film here about the often complicated relationship between fathers and their adult daughters. The film, adapted by Yiyun Li for the screen from her short story of the same name, has much in it that was written specifically about this dynamic in Chinese families, but most anyone watching the film will find something to relate to in the interactions between Mr Shi and his daughter."

• "In The Princess of Nebraska... Wang tackles adapting another short story by Yiyun Li," notes Kim Voynar in another entry. "Wang uses an edgier style to show us 24 hours in the life of a college student some 15 years younger than Yilan, who lives in Omaha but has traveled to San Francisco. The two stories are unrelated, but Wang uses them to contrast the subtle generational differences between a woman raised in 'old-Communist' China against a younger woman raised in the post-Tiananmen Square China infused with an influence of Western capitalism and Paris Hilton."

• This pair of films "was touted in the program book as a back-to-basics return to independent filmmaking after a long losing streak in Hollywood," notes Scott Tobias at the AV Club. "That may be true, but it's certainly not a return to form."

Looks like the jury, headed up by Paul Auster, who, that's right, collaborated with Wayne Wang on Smoke and Blue in the Face, disagrees.

Well, the Special Jury Prize goes to Hana Makhmalbaf's Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame. J Robert Parks caught this in Toronto: "Both a shocking allegory (Ken Morefield, whom I saw the film with, equated it with Lord of the Flies) and a reflection on what children in Afghanistan are really learning, it's absolutely riveting and makes up for any awkwardness in Makhmalbaf's writing and direction."

The best director award goes to Nick Broomfield for Battle for Haditha, which David D'Arcy wrote about a couple of weeks ago.

Best actress: Blanca Portillo in Siete mesas de billar francés (Seven Billiards Tables). Click your way into the site for info in English (bottom right-hand corner). Screenwriters Gracia Querejeta and David Planell share the Jury Prize for Best Screenplay with John Sayles for Honeydripper; here's that Toronto entry.

The cinematography award goes to Charlie Lam for Cheut ai kup gei (Exodus). Twitch covered this one in Toronto: "Hong Kong's Pang Ho-Cheung has lived something of a charmed cinematic life," writes Todd Brown. "Still in his low 30s, the writer-director has turned out a string of popularly beloved and critically acclaimed hits.... Exodus is the first major misfire of his still-young career." Again, mileage varies, evidently. Online listening: Todd talks with Pang Ho-Cheung.

Posted by dwhudson at September 30, 2007 12:05 PM