The American director accepted the award for best film and paid tribute to sex workers around the world. Two awards for Audiard’s Emilia Pérez, including the first palm for a transgender actress. Standing ovation for Lucas
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The American film Anora by Sean Baker won the Palme d’Or at the 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival. The event on the Croisette ended without any prize for the Italian director Paolo Sorrentino, but it held many surprises for international cinema.
Among the favorites of the Croisette audience this year and also of Euronews Cultura, Anora is Baker’s last film after its Cannes premieres The Florida Project And RedRocket.
The jury, chaired by the actress and director Greta Gerwig, made its choice Anora among the 22 films in competition this year, a particularly eclectic and lively selection. And this year’s awards reflect this diverse group of films.
Baker dedicated his Palm to “all sex workers, past, present and future”. It’s about a Kinetic New York screwball comedy who shares the chaotic energy of Uncut Gems by the Safdie brothers, a modern fairy tale inspired by Pretty Woman and which turns into a cruel tragedy on those who society chooses to marginalize and destined for failure. The film brought attention to up-and-coming star Mikey Madison, and it’s a well-deserved award for such a joyful and deceptively dark film.
It is worth mentioning that Anora it was bought by the US studio NEON, which won the Palme d’Or five consecutive times afterwards Parasites, Titan, Triangle of Sadness And Anatomy of a Fall. Considering that the agreements were made before the festival, the victory of Anora makes them the official Palme d’Or whisperers once again.
Read our full review of Anora.
Below is the complete list of winners.
The Grand Prix, the second prize, went to All We Imagine As Light, Payal Kapadia’s hypnotic film. The work about the bonds between three Mumbai women of different ages, is the first Indian film in competition at Cannes in 30 years, the last one was Swaham by Shaji Karun in 1994.
French director Jacques Audiard scored a big win this year with his film Emilia Pérez which won two awards – a rarity in Cannes, as films tend to win only one award.
Emilia Pérez won both the Jury Prize and the Best Actress Award, awarded to the cast of this Spanish-language musical: Zoé Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez and the cast. Gascón is the first transgender actress to win an acting award at Cannes and dedicated her win to the trans community.
Audiard had already won the Palme d’Or in 2015 for Dheepan, and these two awards are richly deserved. The film celebrates “the harmony of sisterhood” said Lily Gladstone, explaining the jury’s motivations.
Read our review by Emilia Pérez.
The award for best director, presented by the great Wim Wenderswent to the Portuguese director Miguel Gomes, for his poetic Grand Tour, which tells of a British official who escapes from his girlfriend by hopping from one Asian country to another. She tries to track him down. It’s hard to connect with Grand Tour. However, patience pays off, as the film mixes black-and-white segments with contemporary anthropological scenes, and culminates in a surprising and moving way.
This year the jury established a special prize, the Special Jury Prize, in honor of Mohammad Rasoulof for his film The Seed of the Sacred Fig. The Iranian film was considered favorite for the Palme d’Or and received the most enthusiastic reactions from the participants, as well as the longest ovation, which lasted 15 minutes. However, in the end he got this special award. Rasoulof’s victory was greeted by a standing ovation at the Theater Lumière, where the director remembered the cast and crew detained in Iran, those who “remain under the watchful eye of the totalitarian Iranian regime, which holds my people hostage “. The director also mentioned the musician Toomaj Salehi, sentenced to death in Iran for supporting the national protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini.
Read our full review of The Seed of the Sacred Fig.
Jesse Plemons won Best Actor for his triple role in Yorgos Lánthimos’ anthology film Kinds of Kindness. Unfortunately the actor was not present.
As we said in our review: “The cast is brilliant, with Plemons stealing the show, especially in the first two segments. Growing noticeably thinner with each chapter, the actor is able to convey pathos, insecurity and menace, making it seem it’s all a walk in the park. It’s as if he’s been working with Lánthimos all his life, and may still be, as both he and Emma Stone have been confirmed as the leads in Lánthimos’ next film, Bugonia“.
Read our full review of Kinds of Kindness.
ADVERTISINGThe best screenplay, presented by the French actor Laurent Lafitte (who made fun of ChatGPT, to celebrate the craft of screenwriting), was awarded to ” The Substance “, bold and beautifully extravagant, by French director Coralie Fargeat. The director thanked the lead actress Demi Moore and underlined how proud she was of the fruit of their collaboration.
The film, which many predicted would win a bigger prize at the ceremony, is one of the highlights of this year’s Competition, a wild and bloody ride.
In our review we wrote: “Showing how the entertainment industry pushes women to the extreme to remain employable, Frageat explores society’s impossible beauty standards, the way some medical industries weaponize their fetishization of youth for of profit, as well as the internalized hatred resulting from systemic misogyny. Perhaps it does not go particularly deep, but the savage form emphatically reflects the content; the violence of disappearing in the eyes of society and the self-hatred that comes from this trauma external becoming internalized can only be expressed equally fiercely.”
Read our full review of The Substance.
Overall, a deserving series of winners, with few upsets or major surprises, and a standing ovation for George Lucas, who this year was honored with an honorary Palm, presented to him by Francis Ford Coppola.
ADVERTISINGThe full list of winners:
– Palme d’Or: Anora (Sean Baker)
– Grand Prix: All We Imagine As Light (Payal Kapadia)
– Jury prize: Emilia Pérez (Jacques Audiard)
– Special jury prize: The seed of the sacred fig (Mohammad Rasoulof)
ADVERTISING– Best director: Miguel Gomes (Grand Tour)
– Best actress: Ensemble for Emilia Pérez (Zoé Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez and the cast)
– Best Actor: Jesse Plemons (Kinds of Kindness)
– Best screenplay: The Substance (Coralie Fargeat)
Other awards:
ADVERTISING– Golden Chamber: Armand (Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel)
– Special mention of the Golden Chamber: Mongrel (Chiang Wei Liang and You Qiao Yin)
– Palme d’Or for the short film: The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent (Nebojša Slijepcevic)
– Special mention for short films: Bad For A Moment (Daniel Soares)
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ADVERTISINGStay tuned to Euronews Cultura for a complete report of the winning films and the main results of this 77th edition.
