The Holocaust drama ‘Son of Saul’ won the Grand Prix, the second most important award, at the Cannes Film Festival this Sunday. It is the highest ever recognition of a Hungarian moview at the Cannes Festival. The movie, directed by László Nemes, also collected three other prizes.
The ‘Son of
Saul’ was named best film by FIPRESCI, the International Federation of Film
Critics, received the Francois Chalais Prize that rewards a film dedicated to
the values of life affirmation and of journalism and the Vulcan Award of the
Technical Artist that rewards the work of a technician for his collaboration in
the creation of a film from the official selection of the Cannes Film Festival.
The movie depicts two days in the life of a Hungarian prisoner working as a member of the Sonderkommando at one of the Auschwitz Crematoriums. In order to bury the corpse of a boy he takes for his son, he tries to carry out his impossible deed: salvage the body and find a rabbi to bury it.
As the
movie website indiewire.com puts it, this Hungarian movie is a genuine
discovery on several fronts, it "illustrates the potential for cinema to
push its linguistic and interpretive boundaries into new arenas. Such radical
approaches are more valuable than ever, particularly as those of us buried in
the Cannes mayhem wake up in the real world."