British director Ken Loach on Sunday won the Cannes film festival's top prize, the Palme d'Or, for his movie The Wind That Shakes the Barley, which recounts Ireland's early struggle for independence.
CANNES (France): British director Ken Loach on Sunday won the Cannes film festival's top prize, the Palme d'Or, for his movie The Wind That Shakes the Barley, which recounts Ireland's early struggle for independence.
Loach, who turns 70 next month, has described the film as also being a critique of the US-led war on Iraq, with guerrillas seeking to oust an occupying military force.
"Maybe if we tell the truth about the past, maybe we tell the truth about the present," he said as he accepted the award.
The Cannes award represented a triumph that has been a long time coming for Loach. Seven of his previous films had been nominated for the Palme d'Or but he has never won the award.
The Wind That Shakes the Barley beat 19 films to snatch the Cannes prize, including critical favourites Volver by Spanish director Pedro Almodovar and Babel by Mexican filmmaker Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.
This year's festival jury was headed by Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai and included actresses Monica Bellucci, Helena Bonham Carter and Zhang Ziyi, and actors Samuel L Jackson and Tim Roth.
In an interview early on in the Cannes festival, Loach said his film, about Ireland's 1920s struggle to throw off the yoke of British colonialism, was "the story of an army of occupation against the wishes of the people, and obviously there are many contemporary references to that."
It tells the tale of two brothers who join a rag-tag band of resistance fighters battling the British in often brutal detail.
Loach said the very nature of an occupying force is one of violence and oppression, and drew parallels with what is happening in Iraq.
"How many have we killed now? How many have we killed in Iraq? An independent body gave the figure as over 100,000 in a couple of years.
"And the British were found guilty by an international court of degrading and inhumane treatment of prisoners in the north of Ireland 20, 30 years ago. So it isn't just in the past."
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