New Delhi: Chinese director Hu Guan's film "Black Dog" won the Un Certain Regard Prize at Cannes. The Jury Prize in this category was awarded to Boris Lojkine’s asylum-seeker tale, "The Story Of Souleymane." Anasuya Sengupta received the Un Certain Regard Prize for Best Actress for her role in "The Shameless." Un Certain Regard is a section within the official selection of the Cannes Film Festival.
About The Shameless
'The Shameless' follows the story of a sex worker who escapes a Delhi brothel after stabbing a policeman. According to Variety, Anasuya Sengupta dedicated her award “to the queer community and other marginalized communities all around the world for so bravely fighting a fight they really shouldn’t have to fight.” She stated, “You don’t have to be queer to fight for equality, you don’t have to be colonized to know that colonizing is pathetic — we just need to be very, very decent human beings.”
Check out the full list of winners here:
Special mention
NORAH
Tawfik Alzaidi
1st film
Youth Award
HOLY COW
Louise Courvoisier
1st film
Best Actress
ANASUYA SENGUPTA
The Shameless
Best Actor
ABOU SANGARÉ
L’Histoire de Souleymane
Best Director ex-aequo
ROBERTO MINERVINI
The Damned
RUNGANO NYONI
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
Jury Prize
L’HISTOIRE DE SOULEYMANE
Boris Lojkine
Un Certain Regard Prize
BLACK DOG
Guan Hu
About Black Dog
'Black Dog' tells the story of a damaged loner who returns to his desert hometown after a stint in prison and finds a kindred spirit in an equally world-weary greyhound. The film beat 17 other titles to win the top prize in the festival’s second-most prestigious competitive section, Un Certain Regard.
Cannes Un Certain Regard Prize
According to the official statement, the 2024 Un Certain Regard selection included 18 feature films, with 8 of them being first features also competing for the Caméra d’or. This year's opening film was Rúnar Rúnarsson’s "When the Light Breaks." The jury was chaired by Canadian actor, director, screenwriter, and producer Xavier Dolan, and included French-Senegalese screenwriter and director Maïmouna Doucouré, Moroccan director, screenwriter, and producer Asmae El Moudir, German-Luxembourg actress Vicky Krieps, and American film critic, director, and writer Todd McCarthy.