Night Moves wins at Deauville

Night Moves, a drama about three environmentalists who plot to blow up a dam, won the top prize at the Deauville Film Festival, which celebrates American movies.

The film, directed by Kelly Reichardt and starring Dakota Fanning, Jesse Eisenberg and Peter Sarsgaard, is set in alternative farming communities in Oregon, with the trio's plan to blow up a hydroelectric dam yielding unexpected consequences.

Critics have hailed Reichardt's latest work and latest collaboration with co-writer Jon Raymond for exploring the tension between idealism and activism and the difficulties that come in negotiating between the two.

Reichardt, whose earlier works with Raymond have made her one of the most critically acclaimed independent filmmakers in the United States, was not at the ceremony, en route to the Toronto Film Festival, where the film is due to have its north American premiere on Sunday.

Deauville's jury prize went to Jeffrey C. Chandor's All is Lost starring Robert Redford and to Sam Fleischner's Stand Clear of the Closing Doors.

In All is Lost, Redford plays a sailor who finds himself staring his mortality in the face after his boat collides with a shipping container in open sea.

Stand Clear of the Closing Doors meanwhile tells the story of an autistic Mexican teenager who runs away into the New York City's subway and his mother's frantic search for him over 11 days.

This year's 39th Deauville festival welcomed stars including John Travolta, promoting Killing Season, an action flick which also stars Robert DeNiro, and Cate Blanchett, who promoted Blue Jasmine, Woody Allen's latest work that tells the story of a fallen New York socialite.
Michael Douglas promoted Behind the Candelabra, a biopic about Liberace also starring Matt Damon. Douglas returned to Deauville, the place where he first met his future wife Catherine Zeta-Jones in 1998, just days after announcing that the couple were separating.

In all, 14 films vied for the festival's Grand Prize.

©AFP, PHOTO / GABRIEL BOUYS