King Sihanouk wins Russian film award

King Sihanouk wins Russian film award

PHNOM PENH (Reuter): The organizers of the recent St. Petersburg film festival have presented Cambodia's King Norodom Sihanouk with a bronze award for his latest film, a royal assistant said on Tuesday.

The international jury picked Sihanouk's An Ambition Reduced to Ashes for the bronze and the festival director made the award during a ceremony on Monday at Sihanouk's Khemarin Palace, said Ieu Pannakar, head of the culture ministry's film department.

Pannakar, who helped the 72-year-old monarch make the film earlier this year at northwest Cambodia's ancient Angkor temples, had no more details. Russian embassy officials were not available for comment.

The 46-minute color feature is set in present-day Cambodia and tells the story of a young prince whose love for a woman eventually costs him his magical powers.

Sihanouk has been a lover of films for half a century and some writers have attributed his 1970 overthrow to his passion for cinematography at the expense of politics in the late 1960s.

The king, who takes the credit as producer, scriptwriter and score master of An Ambition Reduced to Ashes, is reported to be working on a film entitled Flower of Vietnam, based on the friendship between a Cambodian general and a Vietnamese lady.