Thai film 'Uncle Boonmee' takes Cannes top prize

Thailand's Apichatpong Weerasethakul on Sunday took the Palme d'Or top prize at the Cannes film festival with a surreal, hypnotic meditation on reincarnation.

The 39-year-old's "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives" sees a lost son return as a monkey ghost, a disfigured princess have sex with a catfish and a dead wife return to guide her husband into the afterlife.

Apichatpong used his trip to Cannes to denounce his country's tough censorship rules. He told reporters there that "Uncle Boonmee" was a parable "on a cinema that's also dying or dead."