Cannes is considered by many to be the most prestigious of all the film festivals. Getting your film seen there is every filmmaker’s dream. Well, this years Cannes finished up and awards have been announced.
The winner of the creme de la creme of awards, The Palme d’Or, was Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, a stark, black-and-white drama set in a rural German village on the eve of WWI. The film was honored with this ward by the jury of the 62nd Cannes Film Festival on Sunday.
Haneke, who had previously won the director award for Cache (2005) and the Grand Prix for The Piano Teacher (2001), received his first Palme from a visibly delighted Isabelle Huppert, president of the jury. Huppert had won Cannes’ actress award for The Piano Teacher.
“Happiness is a rare thing, but this is a moment in my life when I am truly happy,” Haneke said in his acceptance speech.
The Grand Prix went to French director Jacques Audiard’s tough prison drama A Prophet, which had been a front-runner for a major prize since screening early on in the fest.
These top two prizes represent a coup for Sony Pictures Classics, which acquired North American rights to The White Ribbon before the festival and will distribute A Prophet in multiple territories, including the U.S. The winning of these awards is sure to bring a higher box office.
The only American directed film, in a competition light on U.S. entries, was the actor prize for Christoph Waltz for his multilingual turn as the Nazi “Jew Hunter” in Quentin Tarantino’s German-U.S. production Inglourious Basterds. The 52-year-old Vienna-born actor was previously unknown outside Germany, where he’s spent most of his career in TV.
“I owe this award to (my role as) Col. Landa,” said Waltz in his acceptance speech, “and his unique and inimitable creator, Quentin Tarantino.”
To a standing ovation in the Grand Theater Lumiere, French vetran Alain Resnais, who turns 87 next month, received a lifetime achievement award for his work and contributions to the history of cinema. The visibly frail director declared it “completely surprising,” a possibly ironic reference to his stormy past relations with the fest (starting with 1974’s Stavisky), from which he’s previously won only one award, the Grand Prix for Mon oncle d’Amerique.
While many other Cannes favorite auteurs were completely passed over by the jury, including Pedro Almodovar, Ang Lee and Palme laureates Ken Loach and Jane Campion, Danish maverick Lars von Trier’s latest headline-grabber, Antichrist, at least walked away with an actress nod for Charlotte Gainsbourg’s performance as a mother whose grief over her child’s death takes a psychotic turn.
Sharing the jury prize were Brit director Andrea Arnold’s slice-of-life film Fish Tank and Korean director Park Chan-wook’s vampire film Thirst. Arnold scooped the same award three years ago with her debut feature, Red Road, while Park won the Grand Prix in 2004 for Oldboy.
Australian filmmaker Warwick Thornton’s well-received Aboriginal teen drama, Samson and Delilah, nabbed the Camera d’Or for first film.
Though several of the awards had largely been predicted and were generally seen as well deserved, many others were seen as among the quirkiest in recent memory.
All three of the Asian wins drew heavy booing from the assembled press corps. The biggest scorn was reserved for the director prize for Filipino Brillante Mendoza’s rape-and-dismemberment drama Kinatay (of which even admiring jury member Hanif Kureishi admitted, “I don’t ever want to see it again, myself”), followed by jeers for Thirst and mainland Chinese director Lou Ye’s Spring Fever, which won for screenplay (generally seen as its weakest element).
These awards appeared to have reflected deep divisions within the nine-member jury, which, apart from Huppert, included directors James Gray, Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Lee Chang-dong; writer Kureishi; and actresses Robin Wright Penn, Shu Qi, Asia Argento and Sharmila Tagore.
Before the awards ceremony, rumors were already circulating that jury discussions had been particularly fraught. One member described it as the worst jury experience he’d ever had, while another was said to have described Huppert as a “fascist.” Onstage, Huppert, looking visibly tense, referred to “an unforgettable week” and “several hours, uh, several moments of deliberation.”
Show’s host, comedian Edouard Baer, jokingly suggested that the onstage jury might “perhaps exchange telephone numbers and addresses” before parting. However, at the press conference afterward, several members went out of their way to stress that deliberations were “harmonious” and “democratic.”
Somewhat less harmoniously, the ecumenical jury, which presented its annual award for spiritual values in filmmaking to Loach’s Looking for Eric, bestowed an “anti-prize” on von Trier’s Antichrist. Cannes festival director Thierry Fremaux was quick to denounce the dubious honor, calling it a “ridiculous decision that borders on a call for censorship,” particularly from a jury headed by a filmmaker, Romania’s Radu Mihaileanu.
Here is a list of all the winners:
Palme d’Or
The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke, Germany-France-Austria-Italy)
Grand Prix
A Prophet (Jacques Audiard, France)
Lifetime achievement award
Alain Resnais, Wild Grass (France)
Director
Brillante Mendoza (Kinatay, France-Philippines)
Jury prize
Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold, U.K.)
Thirst (Park Chan-wook, South Korea-U.S.)
Actor
Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds (U.S.-Germany)
Actress
Charlotte Gainsbourg, Antichrist
(Denmark-Germany-France-Sweden-Italy-Poland)
Screenplay
Mei Feng, Spring Fever (Hong Kong-France)
UN CERTAIN REGARD JURY AWARDS
Main Prize
Dogtooth (Yorgos Lanthimos, Greece)
Jury Prize
Police, Adjective (Corneliu Porumboiu, Romania)
Special Prize
No One Knows About Persian Cats (Bahman Ghobadi, Iran), Father of My Children (Mia Hansen-Love, France)
OTHER MAIN JURY AWARDS
Camera d’Or
Samson and Delilah (Warwick Thornton)
Special Mention
Ajami (Scandar Copti, Yaron Shani, Israel-Germany)
Critics’ Week Grand Prix
Farewell Gary (Nassim Amamouche, France)
FIPRESCI AWARDS
Competition
The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke, Germany-Austria-France-Italy)
Un Certain Regard
Police, Adjective (Corneliu Porumboiu, Romania)
Directors’ Fortnight
Amreeka (Cherien Dabis, Canada-Kuwait-U.S.)
SHORT FILMS JURY PRIZES
Palme d’Or
Arena (Joao Salaviza, Portugal)
Special Mention
The Six Dollar Fifty Man (Mark Albiston, Louis Sutherland, New Zealand)
CINEFONDATION
First Prize
Baba (Zuzana Kirchnerova-Spidlova)
Second Prize
Goodbye (Song Fang)
Third Prize
Diploma (Yaelle Kayam)
Don’t Step Out of the House (Jo Sung-hee)
ECUMENICAL PRIZE
Looking for Eric (Ken Loach, U.K.-France-Italy-Belgium-Spain)
PRIX VULCAIN TECHNICAL AWARD
Aitor Berenguer, sound mixer (Map of the Sounds of Tokyo, Spain)
Source: Variety
