Thai, Malaysian, Chinese directors to share film award
Posted: 12 October 2007 1314 hrs

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BUSAN, South Korea - Three emerging Asian film-makers are to share the main award at this year's Pusan International Film Festival, organisers announced Friday.

Thailand's Aditya Assarat with "Wonderful Town", Guang Hao-jin (Life Track) of China and Malaysia's Liew Seng Tat (Flower in the Pocket) will each receive 30,000 dollars as joint winners of the New Currents award.

"Our main goal is to encourage people to make films," said the festival's director of programming for Asian films, Kim Ki-seok.

"So when we received extra sponsorship this year we decided we could use it to encourage even more people to make films by splitting the award three ways."

Normally the festival here has had just one main winner.

Assarat was woken up with the news. "What a great way to greet the day," he said. "Film-making is a lonely process -- especially your first film -- so it is nice to be noticed and supported."

The award -- to be presented at Friday night's closing ceremony -- was open to first and second-time Asian film-makers and the festival had 800 entries.

Organisers whittled that down to a shortlist of 11.

The head of the jury, veteran Iranian director Dariush Mehrjui, said that competition between the finalists had been tough.

"We had great difficulty finding the winners, even though there were three to find," he said. "Luckily things did not get violent in the jury room but we had long debates.

"We think the entries show there are some dynamic and exciting film-makers out here in Asia."

The festival, the 12th of its kind, set a record for attendances of nearly 200,000 people over its 10 days, during which it screened 271 films from around the world. - AFP/ir