Russian, Lebanese films get top awards at Abu Dhabi festival

Oct 23, 2010, 13:48 GMT

Abu Dhabi - Russian and Lebanese directors won the two top awards as the curtains came down on the fourth Abu Dhabi film festival, local media said Saturday.

Best Narrative Film went to Alexsei Fedorchenko's Silent Souls, which depicts a journey of a man who goes to cremate the dead body of his beloved wife, on a riverbank in the area where they spent their honeymoon.

The movie was awarded the prize 'for its poetic depiction of the echoes of a cultural heritage for the people of today and for the excellence of its cinematic language', the jury said.

Bahij Hojeij's Chatti Ya Dini, or Here Comes the Rain, won the best narrative film from the Arab World. The movie, Hojeij's second feature film, tells the story of a man's life when he is released 20 years after he was abducted in the mid-eighties civil war in Lebanon.

Each film took 100,000 US dollars at Friday's closing ceremony of the festival, as well as Patricio Guzman's Nostalgia for the Light and Pink Saris, directed by Kim Longinotto, who shared the award for the best documentary.

US actress Uma Thurman and Irish actor Jonathan-Rhys Meyers were among the celebrities who walked up the red carpet at the closing ceremony.

The Black Pearl award for best actor, worth 25,000 dollars, went to Andrew Garfield for his role in Never Let Me Go (Britain, USA), and the award for best actress was shared by Alicia Laguna and Sonia Couoh for the Mexican film Northless, a movie by Rigoberto Perezcano which also received the jury special mention award.

The ten-day festival, one of the largest film festivals in the Arab world, opened on October 14. It featured 172 movies from 43 countries, including 26 international premieres.