“Ilo Ilo” named Best Picture winner at Taiwan's Golden Horse Awards

PanARMENIAN.Net - Singaporean director Anthony Chen's Ilo Ilo was the surprise Best Picture winner at Taiwan's Golden Horse Awards Saturday, November 23 night in Taipei, The Hollywood Reporter said.

The 29-year-old director's debut feature beat out titles from some of the most established names in Chinese-language cinema, including Johnnie To's Drug War, Wong Kar Wai's The Grandmaster, A Touch of Sin from Jia Zhangke and Tsai Ming-liang's Stray Dogs. It's been an impressive year for Chen, beginning with his Camera d'Or win for Ilo Ilo at the Cannes Film Festival in May. His film is Singapore's official entry for the foreign language film category Oscar and last month he signed with Hollywood talent agency UTA.

The Golden Horse Awards, celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, is the longest running films honors program in Chinese cinema. Unlike the Oscars or France's Cesars, the Golden Horse winners are decided by jury. This year's jury was chaired by two-time Oscar winner Ang Lee, who presented the best picture trophy to Chen and his team, saying the jurors spent two hours deliberating the winner and conducted four rounds of voting to reach their decision.

Earlier in the night Chen also won Best Debut Director and Best Original Screenplay, while Ilo Ilo's Yeo Yann Yann was named best supporting actress.

Wong Kar Wai's The Grandmaster took the greatest number of trophies, winning in six of the 11 categories in which it was nominated, including a best actress statue for Chinese star Zhang Ziyi. It was Zhang's fourth nomination for best actress at the Golden Horse awards and her first win.

"It was a very long and suffering journey making The Grandmaster, but now I'm very happy," she said. Zhang also thanked her co-star Tony Leung saying, "you are always the best actor in my heart and in my mind."

Leung lost out in the Best Actor category, however, to Lee Kang-sheng from Malaysian director Tsai Ming-liang's mediative drama about underclass hardship, Stray Dogs. Tsai won Best Director for the effort. Stray Dogs had previously won the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival.