Low-budget tale from Romania wins top prize at Cannes festival

ROMANIAN director Cristian Mungiu won the Cannes Film Festival's top prize last night with 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, a harrowing portrait of an illegal abortion in Communist-era Romania.

The low-budget, naturalistic film about a student who goes through horrors to ensure that her friend can have a secret abortion beat 21 films in competition for the Palme d'Or.

The festival's No 2 award, the Grand Prix, went to the Japanese director Naomi Kawase's Mogari No Mori (The Mourning Forest), the story of a retirement home resident and a caretaker struggling to overcome loss.

American Julian Schnabel won best director for his French-language film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, based on a memoir by a French magazine editor who became paralysed after a stroke and learned to write again by blinking his eyelid into a sensor.

A special prize for Cannes' 60th anniversary went to US director Gus van Sant, who won the top award in 2003.

Two films shared the jury prize: Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi's adaptation of her graphic novel about growing up during Iran's Revolution, which she co-directed with Vincent Paronnaud; and Stellet Licht (Silent Light), Carlos Reygadas' tale of forbidden love set in a Mexican Mennonite community.