Thai director Aditya Assarat shares the New Currents Award from this year's Pusan International Film Festival with two other Asian filmmakers, Guang Hao-jin of China and Liew Seng Tat from Malaysia.

Aditya was woken up with the news that he had won, according to an article by Agence France-Presse. "What a great way to greet the day," he was quoted as saying. "Film-making is a lonely process - especially your first film - so it is nice to be noticed and supported."

Aditya's film is Wonderful Town, his first feature film. It is a drama set in post-tsunami Phuket. Aditya has previously made short films, such as Motorcycle, though he had a hand in co-directing ML Mingmongkol Sonakul's experimental 2005 feature, 3 Friends, which starred Napakpapha "Mamee" Nakprasitte.

Guang Hao-jin directed Life Track and Liew Seng Tat's film is Flower in the Pocket.

Each of the winners at Pusan will receive US$30,000. The New Currents Award is the main award from the Pusan fest, the biggest film festival in Asia. The award, presented at Friday night's closing ceremony, is open to first and second-time Asian filmmakers. Out of 800 entries that entered the competition, festival programmers whittled that down to 11.

Normally the festival would limited to choose one winner.

"Our main goal is to encourage people to make films," Kim Ki-seok, the festival's director of programming for Asian films, was quoted as saying by AFP. "So when we received extra sponsorship this year we decided we could use it to encourage even more people to make films by splitting the award three ways."