Hungarian film wins top award at Czech festival

Hungarian director Janos Szasz's film "Le grand cahier" won the Crystal Globe award at the film festival in the western Czech spa town of Karlovy Vary, the organisers said on Saturday. Based on "The Notebook", a prize-winning novel by Hungarian writer Agota Kristof, the film tells the story of two 13-year-old twins spending the last years of World War II with their cruel grandmother. The film was co-produced by Austria, France and Germany. US star actor John Travolta and three-time Oscar-winning filmmaker Oliver Stone received the Crystal Globe awards for their contribution to cinematography at the 48th edition of the festival which started on June 28. The organisers said that 128,031 tickets were sold for 461 film screenings, up from 2012 when 121,000 cinema-goers attended the festival.