Asia has taken the prizes for female and male interpretation of the 75th Cannes Film Festival. The jury consecrated South Korean star Song Kang-ho and Iranian actress Zar Amir Ebrahimi on Saturday.
Zar Amir Ebrahimi, who had to leave Iran for France in 2008 following a sex scandal, was crowned the Best Actress award on Saturday for her role in Ali Abbasi’s thriller ‘The Nights of Mashhad ‘.
The actress first spoke in Farsi when she received her award. “Tonight I have the feeling of having had a very long journey before arriving here on this stage (…) a journey marked by humiliations”, she said, thanking France for the to have welcomed.
In this thriller with David Fincher sauce in the land of the mullahs which tells the assassination of prostitutes by a madman of God, she plays a journalist in search of truth but confronted with the machismo of a patriarchal Iranian society.
‘This film is about women, their bodies, this film is filled with hatred, hands, breasts, everything that cannot be shown in Iran. Thank you Ali Abassi for being so crazy, so generous. Thank you for this art so powerful,’ she said, visibly moved.
Born in Tehran where she grew up, she performed in the theater and held important roles in TV movies and series. Her career was abruptly interrupted in 2006 due to a sex scandal.
Scandal which forces her to leave her country for France in 2008. ‘I am condemned to freedom in France, I would like my family to be proud of me tonight as I am proud of my parents’, she still said.
‘The lucky stars’
The Best Actor award went to South Korean Song Kang-ho, 55, for his role in Japan’s Hirokazu Kore-Eda’s ‘Good Stars’.
Favorite actor of his compatriot Bong Joon-ho, and star of his film ‘Parasite’, Palme d’Or 2019, he plays in this Kore-eda film a man involved in baby trafficking, who will form a small family of odds and ends around him.
‘I am very happy for all my family,’ he soberly declared when he received his award at Cannes.
In the film, her debt-ridden character discovers an abandoned baby and volunteers to find her a new family, in exchange for money.
Around him gravitate another man who helps him in the ‘transaction’ and the young mother, whose motives remain opaque for a long time.
The sale of the baby will turn into a trip between Busan and Seoul, in a decrepit van.
Song Kang-ho expected “meticulous and calculated” acting direction from Kore-eda. “But he really respected us and brought out our emotions in a way that was really free, caring and inexhaustible,” he said in early May in Seoul.
In 25 years of career, Song Kang-ho has toured with many South Korean directors including Park Chan-wook (‘Thirst, this is my blood’, 2009, ‘Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance’ 2003) and Bong Joon-ho (‘Memories of a Murder’ 2004, ‘the Host’ 2006, before ‘Parasite’).
/ATS