MIAMI: "Bonsai", directed by Chile’s Cristian Jimenez, won the best Ibero-American film award at Miami’s International Film Festival, which concluded its 29th edition Sunday after the screening of about 100 films from 35 countries.

The co-production by Chile, Argentina, Portugal and France also received the award for best screenwriting, which comes with a $5,000 cash prize, for Jimenez’s work in his second feature length film based on the same-named novel by Alejandro Zamba.

Jimenez said recently in an interview that "Bonsai" is not "just an adaptation of a novel, but a work whose theme is literary expression", and in which books "play a role that goes far beyond their content".

Festival director Jaeo Laplante agreed that this edition of the festival was "the most powerful" in the almost three decades it had been held, during which time it has become a entry conduit for Ibero-American filmmakers to the US market.