A Good Day to be an Aussie in the Philippines

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It’s a good day to be an Aussie/Filipino, my home country and my adopted country both picked up gongs at Cannes.

First time director Warwick Thornton got the Palme d’Or for best first film for his love story “Samson and Delilah” and Brillante Mendoza picked up the directors Palme d’Or for his crime movie “Kinatay”.

The Filipino’s grisly tale of a kidnap-rape victim who is beaten up before being murdered and hacked to pieces in “Kinatay” nudged out heavy weight directors like Quentin Tarantino and Jane Campion to get the nod from the International Film Festival’s judges. These same judges said that the slow, shy courtship of the young petrol sniffing boy and the girl caring for her aged grandmother in “Samson and Delilah” was the best love story they had seen in many years.

Now the tricky bit will be to find a cinema that will show these films in preference to the standard Hollywood fare.

To find out about all the Cannes winners go here