The Taipei Film Festival has awarded its $30,000 grand prize to Tsai Ming-liang's I Don't Want To Sleep Alone.

Tsai, a regular competitor at the Taipei Film Festival, had withdrawn the film from last year's Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards.

31 recent Taiwan films competed for the grand prize in four categories: narrative film, documentary, experimental film and animation. Individual prizes are given in each section with Tsai's feature chosen as the overall winner (see below for full list of winners).

Five special jury awards brought attention to directors Lin Ching-chieh and Sean Kao who each had two films in competition. Lin's The Most Distant Course was the festival's opening film; Kao's The Soul Of The Bread took the Audience Choice Award.

Mid-festival, awards were presented to Sven Taddicken's Emma's Bliss from Germany and Kim Young-nam's Don't Look Back from South Korea in the International New Talent Competition. Fourteen films by first or second-time directors competed.

Since 2002, the festival has established itself as one of the region's most important for discovering new Chinese cinema under film critic Wen Tien-hsiang. At the beginning of the year, Wen was replaced by seasoned programmer Jane Yu.

While still an important event for premiering new Taiwan cinema, this year's festival presented few Chinese-language discoveries. Yu acknowledges this and with more time to travel plans to reinvigorate the Chinese-language programme next year.

Festival highlight was the annual 'First Look at Three Taiwan Films' that introduces upcoming features: Cheng Wen-tang's Summer's Tail, Singing Chen's God Man Dog and Niu Cheng-tse's mockumentary What On Earth Have I Done Wrong'!

The 18-day festival closed with Susanne Bier's After The Wedding from Denmark as part of an focus on the country that included a programme of contemporary Danish cinema, Dogme films and a tribute to Carl Dreyer.

TAIPEI GRAND AWARDS

Grand Prize: I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (dir. Tsai Ming-liang)

Best Narrative Film: The Secret In The Wind (dir. Wang Yen-ni)

Best Documentary: Rock The Boat (dir. Kuo Shiao-yun)

Best Experimental Film: Follow Me Please (dir. Cheng Hao-chuan)

Best Animation: Check Mate (dir. Su Wen-sheng)

Special Jury Awards: Lin Ching-chie (as director of The Most Distant Course and Street Survivor); Tang Wei-hsuan & Chang Keng-hua (as art directors of The Wall-Passer); En Chen (as cinematographer of Island Etude); Sean Kao (as director of The Soul Of The Bread and A Starry Silent Night); animation Woodman 2 BBS Fighting.

Special Mention: Lee Chia-ying (actress of The Wall-Passer)

Media's Choice Award: Island Etude (dir. En Chen)

Audience's Choice Award: The Soul Of The Bread (dir. Sean Kao)

TAIPEI IMAGE AWARD

Grand Prize: A Clockwork Girl (dir. Wind Chan)

2nd Prize: Boys (dir. Kao Shih-wen)

3rd Prize: The Moment (dir. Yen Ching-hung)

Audience's Choice Award: A Clockwork Girl (dir. Wind Chan)

INTERNATIONAL NEW TALENT COMPETITION

Grand Prize: Emma's Bliss (dir. Sven Taddicken)

Special Jury Prize: Don't Look Back (dir. Kim Young-nam)

Audience's Choice Award: Pure Hearts (dir. Kenneth Kainz)

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