CANNES, FRANCE--Shot on a low budget of less than a million dollars, Sundance Film Festival winner "Fruitvale Station" is taking the Cannes Film Festival by storm. It's competing in the "Un Certain Regard" category in the festival, and the notoriously critical Cannes audience gave the film rapt applause when the screening concluded.
The film, directed by 26-year old Ryan Coogler, is about the last day of Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old, African-American Bay Area resident who was shot to death by a BART transit police officer in the early hours of New Year's Day, 2009. Grant was unarmed at the time of the shooting.
The officer who shot him was charged with murder. However, the officer claimed he mistook his gun for his taser when he shot Grant, and the jury convicted him of involuntary manslaughter.
Riots and protests broke out in the Bay Area after the verdict was handed down.