At Cannes with a blood-and-gore tale about vampire love titled 'Thirst', South Korea's Park Chan-wook jointly won the festival's Jury Prize, taking home his second trophy from the festival after 'Old Boy' in 2004.

A torrid and unexpectedly graphic gay love movie from China, 'Spring Fever', won best screenplay for outlawed director Lou Ye.

And Mendoza, one of the most divisive directors at the 12-day movie bonanza, got the best director prize for a gritty look at violence in 'Kinatay', which means massacre and shows the slow butchering of a prostitute into pieces with blunt kitchen knives.

'I know opinions are divided on my movies,' Mendoza said after picking up his prize. 'I was expecting it.' Mendoza faced a barrage of criticism from some quarters at Cannes at his first showing last year with 'Serbis', which was set in a Manila porn-theatre with long close-ups of festering boils and overflowing toilets.

Both films background Manila's poor, with 'Kinatay' chronicling a day in the life of a young police officer that begins with his wedding and closes with his involvement in the rape, murder and hacking into pieces of a prostitute.

'This is not just entertainment, these kinds of stories are real,' Mendoza said.

Park's priest-turned-vampire suffers cruelly in the movie, from inner demons and physical ills, but picking up his award at the red-carpet ceremony the film-maker in contrast said: 'I think I still have a long way to go to be a true artist because I still don't know about the pain of creation. I only know about the joy of creation.' Park, who describes his rivers-of-blood tale as a 'scandalous vampire melodrama,' shows a good-Samaritan priest caught in an ethical quagmire after being turned into a vampire by a mysterious blood transfusion.

Lusting not only after blood but after a childhood friend's wife - who turns into a vampire too - the priest is drawn into crime while seeking redemption as he soars through windows to rooftops in search of life-saving blood supplies. -- AFP