SAN SEBASTIAN • Asian cinema dominated the San Sebastian Film Festival last Saturday, with famed Chinese director Feng Xiaogang's I Am Not Madame Bovary taking the top prize and Fan Bingbing winning Best Actress for the same film.

In the comedy, Fan plays a cafe owner seeking revenge against her ex-husband. The film follows a couple who decide to fake a divorce as a ploy to obtain a property.

Their plans go awry when Fan's character discovers her husband has moved into their new apartment with another woman, spurring her on a years-long mission to get the fake divorce annulled, so that she can then get a divorce for real.

The comedy had attracted attention this month at the Toronto International Film Festival where it won a jury prize for "its ambitious rendering of a woman's Kafkaesque struggle as she takes on the Chinese legal system".

Among the other awards, South Korea's Hong Sang Soo won Best Director for his comedy Yourself And Yours, about the adventures of a painter seeking to win back his girlfriend.

Spain's Eduard Fernandez took home the Best Actor Silver Shell for his role in Smoke And Mirrors, about real-life Spanish spy Francisco Paesa.

The festival's Latin Horizons section on Latin American film honoured Chilean director Pepa San Martin's first feature Rara, about the struggle of a lesbian judge who loses custody of her daughters because of her sexual orientation.

The 64th edition of the festival held in the northern Spanish seaside resort saw 17 films in competition from China, Spain, Argentina, Chile, France, Britain, the United States, Sweden, Iceland, Poland, South Korea and Japan.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE