This year's Silver Shell award at the San-Sebastian film festival has been given to a Chinese director for the second year in a row.
Zhang Yang's Sunflower took home Best Director and Best Photography Silver Shell award over the weekend in Spain.
Czech director Bohdan Slama's Stesti (Something Like Happiness) was voted Best Film.
It was the second time Zhang has won a Silver Shell. He received his first one in 1999.
Sunflower tells the story of a family set against thirty years of Chinese history.
It starts in the last year of the Cultural Revolution (1976), when the little 9-year-old Xiangyang reencounters the father he can't remember - a father who has spent the last six years of his life in a labor camp. During this time Xiangyang has grown fond of his independence, of playing with other children and roaming the streets of Beijing. But his father decides to make up for lost time, and the happy-go-lucky boy starts sensing that the fun is about to end.
Cinemas from several countries including Japan, the US and France, are negotiating the film's screening rights abroad.
Starring veteran actor Sun Haiying and Chen Chong, this award-winning film is expected to open to Chinese audience from 18th October.
(CRI September 26, 2005)
