Ruben Ostlund, a Swedish director, won the Palme d’Or at Saturday’s 75th Cannes Film Festival. His class warfare comedy “Triangle of Sadness”, which was directed by Ruben Ostlund, gave Ostlund one of the most prestigious prizes in cinema for the second consecutive year.
Ostlund won Cannes’ top prize for back-toback films in 2017. His art-world parody “The Square” won the Palme in 2017. “Triangle of Sadness” features Woody Harrelson playing a Marxist yacht captain, and a dramatic scene with rampant vomiting.
Ostlund stated, “We wanted to go out with people after the screening and have something to discuss.” “All of us agree that cinema is unique because we are all watching it together. We need to have something to talk about, but we also need to have fun and be entertained.
A nine-member jury led by Vincent Lindon, a French actor, selected the winners and presented them Saturday at the closing ceremony of Cannes’ Grand Lumiere Theater.
The second prize of the jury, the Grand Prix was split between Lukas Dhont, a Belgian director, and “Close,” a tender drama about a 13-year-old boy whose bond is broken by their intimacies being mocked by schoolmates. Also, Claire Denis, a French filmmaking legend, shared “Stars at Noon” with Claire Denis. This Denis Johnson adaptation features Margaret Qualley, a journalist from Nicaragua.
The South Korean filmmaker Park Chanwook (“Oldboy,” “The Handmaiden”) won the directing prize for his dark noir “Decision to Leave,” which combines romance and a police procedural.
Song Kang Ho, a Korean actor, was awarded the best actor award for his performance in Hirokazu Koreda’s Japanese film “Broker”, about a Korean family looking for a place for an abandoned child.
Song said, “I’d love to thank all who appreciate Korean cinema.” He also starred in Bong Joon Ho’s Palme d’Or-winning film “Parasite” at Cannes three years back.
Zar Amir Ebrahimi was awarded best actress for her role as a journalist in Ali Abbasi’s “Holy Spider”, a true crime thriller about a serial killer who targets sex workers in Iran’s religious city of Mashhad. Violent and graphic, “Holy Spider,” was not allowed to be shot in Iran. Instead, it was made in Jordan. Ebrahimi accepted the award and stated that the film shows “everything impossible to show in Iran”.
The jury prize was split between “The Eight Mountains,” Charlotte Vandermeersch’s friendship tale, and Felix Van Groeningen’s “The Eight Mountains,” a Polish director Jerzy Skolowski’s “EO,” a story about a donkey’s trip across a pitiless and modern Europe.
Skolimowski said, “I would like thank my donkeys,” and went on to name all six donkeys involved in the film.
A special award was also presented by the jury for the 75th Cannes to Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne from Belgium, who are two-time Palme-winners and a long-standing presence at the festival. They were awarded for their immigrant drama “Tori and Lokita.” Tarik Saleh, a Swedish-Egyptian filmmaker, won best screenplay at Cannes for his thriller “Boy From Heaven” set in Cairo’s Al-Azhar Mosque.
Riley Keough and Gina Gammell won the Camera d’Or award for the best first film. They were nominated for “War Pony”, a drama about Pine Ridge Reservation that was created in collaboration with Oglala Lakota residents and Sicangu Lakota citizens.
Saturday’s closing ceremony marked the end of a Cannes festival that tried to revive the annual France extravaganza, which was cancelled in 2020 due to the pandemic. It saw only modest attendances last year. The backdrop of war in Ukraine made this year’s festival seem even more unfocused. This led to red-carpet protests, and a discussion about the role of cinema in wartime.
The Cannes top prize went to “Titane”, a French horror film about body horror. Julia Decournau was the only female director to win the Palme. After winning the Academy Awards, Bong JoonHo’s “Parasite”, won in Cannes.
Cannes had 21 films competing for the top Hollywood films this year. Their presence restored some of Cannes’ glamour following the downturn in the festival over the past two years.