GENEVA.- Indonesian director Edwin on Saturday won the Golden Leopard for the best picture at the Locarno Film Festival with "Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash", a homage to 1980s Asian all-action movies.

The feature paints a humorous portrait of a violent young man who falls for a woman after fighting her.

Edwin, who uses a single name, had already returned to Jakarta before the awards ceremony but the organisers put out a video in which he said the Golden Leopard was "happiness... it’s a nice support and it motivates.

"We need this energy in this not so easy time."

Indonesian cinema was still young, he said, as in most of the cinema in the region.

"I feel connected with the all of southeast Asian region because we are facing more or less the same spirit and also at the same time facing the same problem, you know we have censorship, we have violence here and there.

"We are very excited with the growing of our cinema," he added.

"And even in this very difficult time, we can find the energy and all those spirits that can bring us, keeping us together and.... celebrating ourselves and at the same time criticising and find out what do in order to face our problems through cinema."

To close the 74th Locarno festival a lifetime achievement award was made to Italian director Dario Argento, including for his leading role in Gaspar Noe's Vortex about an elderly couple coping with Alzheimer's disease.


© Agence France-Presse