SAN SEBASTIAN, Spain (AFP) - A film about Iraqi children victims of war "Turtles can fly" directed by Iranian Bahman Ghobadi won the Concha de Oro (Golden Shell) at the prestigious San Sebastian film festival.
The award for best director went to China's Xu Jinglei for her touching movie "Letters from an Unknown Woman" based on a novel by Austrian author Stefan Zweig.
Some 16 movies had been competing over eight days in the competition held in Spain's Basque country and presided over by Hispano-Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa.
The award for the best actress was taken by Denmark's Connie Nielsen for her role in "Brothers", while her countryman Ulrich Thomsen who starred alongside Nielsen in the film took the honours for best actor.
"Brothers" deals with the disastrous consequences of war on a family whose father is sent to Afghanistan.
Ghobadi's film was the first ever about Iraqi Kurdish children.
"Turtles can Fly", the last film to be presented in competition here, is set in a Kurdish refugee camp in northern Iraq on the eve of the US-led invasion to topple former dictator Saddam Hussein.
"My film is not about the politics but about the real lives of these people. I tried to show scenes that cable and satellite (television) never show," Ghobadi said on Friday.
"(US President) George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein have become television superstars, but the real heroes are the children," she said.
The film "Songe d'une Nuit d'Ete" (A Midsummer Night's Dream) by Serbian director Goran Paskaljevic snapped up the jury's Special Award "for the way in which it reveals the tragic consequences of a civil conflict through a relationship between a survivor and a young autistic girl."