Cannes films mirror a troubled world

CANNES, France, May 29 (Reuters) If cinema is the mirror of the world, then the films at this year's Cannes festival suggest the world is in a sorry state.

War, rape, kidnap, torture, prejudice, environmental meltdown and dictatorship filled the screens during 12 days of competition, which ended yesterday with British director Ken Loach taking the ''Palme d'Or'' prize for his Irish war drama.

While ''The Wind That Shakes the Barley'' is not a political polemic in the mould of Michael Moore's 2004 Cannes winner ''Fahrenheit 9/11'', Loach draws parallels between the Irish fight against British rule in 1920 and the events in Iraq today.

The runner-up prize went to ''Flanders'', another film about war, and, although French director Bruno Dumont denied any overt message, the portrayal of soldiers fighting Arab-speaking forces in desert terrain meant comparisons with Iraq were inevitable.

US actor George Clooney has likened movies' preoccupation with controversial issues to political cinema in the '60s and '70s, and Loach, a left-wing director critical of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, welcomed the movement.

''The wars that we have seen, the occupations that we see throughout the world -- people finally cannot turn away from that,'' he told reporters yesterday.

''The fact that this is reflected in cinema is very important for the health of cinema. It's very exciting to be able to deal with this in films and not just be a complement to the popcorn.'' The Wind That Shakes the Barley and Flanders were two of 20 main competition films in Cannes.

Also touching on sensitive issues were Chinese director Lou Ye's ''Summer Palace'', set against the backdrop of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, and ''Days of Glory'', exploring how North Africans fought for France during World War Two.

''Buenos Aires 1977'' told the story of four men kidnapped and tortured by the military government in Argentina, while ''Pan's Labyrinth'' was a dark fantasy story about a girl's mental escape from the cruelty of Franco's Spain in 1944.

And ''Babel'', which won Mexican Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu the best director award, explores how the West and Arab world often jump to wrong conclusions about each other due to the atmosphere of suspicion since September 11, 2001.

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