BERLIN: Peruvian director Claudia Llosa's Milk of Sorrow, the magic-realism-tinged story of women suffering the effects of the long battle between Peru's government and Shining Path terrorists, won the top prize at the Berlin Film Festival. Argentinian director Adrian Biniez's debut Gigante (about a supermarket security guard obsessed with a late-night cleaner) shared the runner-up Silver Bear prize with German director Maren Ade's Everyone Else. The latter film's star, Birgit Minichmayr, won best actress honors, while Sotigui Kouyate took best actor for the British film London River (about the aftermath of the London terror bombings). American films were not completely shut out of the competition. Oren Moverman and Alessandro Camon won the best script award for The Messenger, a film about two U.S. soldiers (Ben Foster and Woody Harrelson) assigned to inform a young widow (Samantha Morton) that her husband has died in Iraq. In addition, the festival's Audience Award went to Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno's gonzo-style documentary The Yes Men Fix the World in which the prankster filmmakers pose as reps for multinational corporations to make increasingly outrageous proposals.
Friday, August 14, 2009 MUMBAI: A 26-year-old woman died Thursday of H1N1 swine flu in the southern city of Bangalore, raising India's death toll from the virus to 20, authorities said.The death was the first reported in India's information technology capital, the Press Trust of India reported.Meanwhile in Pune, the worst-affected in India, two more victims of the virus died Thursday, raising the death toll in that western city near Mumbai to 12, the report said. The victims were an 11-month-old boy and a 75-year-old old woman.US media reported movie halls, schools and colleges were ordered closed Thursday for three days to a week in Mumbai, the commercial and financial capital of the country, as fear of the pandemic spread.Prajakata Lavangare, a spokeswoman for the government of Maharashtra state of which Mumbai is the capital, said similar orders were issued in Pune, which is also located in the state.The woman who died in Bangalore was identified only as Roopa, a teacher in...
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