CANNES, France (AFP) – Banned Chinese film director Lou Ye's screenwriter, Feng Mei, on Sunday won the Cannes festival's best screenplay award for the torrid underground movie on a gay love triangle, "Spring Fever".

Lou shot the sultry movie in secret over two months and told AFP at the film festival that he hoped "to be the last Chinese director ever to be banned, that no one else suffer this."

"My films cannot be viewed in China," he told AFP. "My producers are trying to have the ban lifted because it is senseless."

Filmed in Nanjing city, the film was one of 20 movies in the running for the Palme d'Or. He used a hand-held camera to film actors whose characters become involved in a love triangle that involves a lot of graphic gay sex.