'Embrace of the Serpent' tops Directors' Fortnight awards

Pic Courtesy: Trailer grab

Cannes: Colombian director Ciro Guerra's "Embrace of the Serpent" won the top honour, the Art Cinema Award, in the Directors' Fortnight sidebar at Cannes International Film Festival.

Eighteen films were screened in the feature competition. "Embrace of the Serpent" revolves around Karamakate, an Amazonian shaman and the last survivor of his people and two scientists who, over the course of 40 years, build a friendship, said the Hollywood Reporter.

The movie was inspired by the journals of two explorers who traveled through the Colombian Amazon during the last century: the German Theodor Koch-Grunberg and the American Richard Evans Schultes.

The SACD Prize, awarded to a French-language film, went to "My Golden Days". The film is a prequel to Arnaud Desplechin's 1996 movie "My Sex Life... Or How I Got Into an Argument".

"Mustang" by Deniz Gamze Erguven, won the Europa Cinemas award while the Illy prize for short film went to Fyzal Boulifa's "Rate Me" about a teenage escort.

The top awards of the festival will be handed over to the winners in a ceremony tomorrow night during the closing ceremony of the festival.