CANNES, France — The satire “Triangle of Unhappiness,” from the Swedish director Ruben Ostlund, gained the Palme d’Or on the seventy fifth Cannes Movie Pageant at a ceremony right here on Saturday. A blunt, ugly sendup of sophistication politics, the film had sharply divided critics.
The awards ceremony ran a comparatively painless 90 or so minutes, one other reminder that the emphasis at Cannes stays on the films themselves, not the accompanying circus. Held contained in the magnificent Grand Lumière Theater contained in the competition’s headquarters — with the nine-person jury watching from the stage — the awards confer essential legitimation and generate much-needed public relations for motion pictures that, years into the pandemic, are headed right into a still-difficult world for artwork cinema.
The Grand Prix — the competition’s second prize — was cut up between “Shut,” from the Belgian director Lukas Dhont, and “Stars at Midday,” from the French auteur Claire Denis. “Stars at Midday” was brutalized by critics, however it wasn’t wholly a shock that it gained an award: Vincent Lindon, the president of this 12 months’s jury, has appeared in a number of of Denis’s motion pictures. “Shut,” a essential and viewers favourite about two 13-year-old boys whose friendship is tragically examined, drew heat applause from the Lumière viewers.
The Jury Prize, the third prize, was cut up between two very totally different dramas: “EO,” a heartbreaker a couple of donkey from the Polish auteur Jerzy Skolimowski, and “The Eight Mountains,” a coming-of-age story from the Belgian filmmakers Felix Van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch. Skolimowski, 84, started his acceptance speech by thanking (and naming) all six of his donkeys — together with somewhat magnificence referred to as Taco. For her half, Vandermeersch appeared to shock her co-director and associate by repeatedly kissing him proper earlier than he began his acceptance speech.
The South Korean director Park Chan-wook gained the director prize for “Determination to Depart,” an entertainingly twisty thriller (which riffs on Hitchcock’s “Vertigo”), which was a essential favourite. “That is so cool,” Park stated in English on taking the stage, although he additionally added an expletive.
The screenplay award was given to the engrossing (and chatty) drama “Boy from Heaven,” from the Swedish director Tarik Saleh. The movie traces the political intrigues swirling round a younger Egyptian pupil, a Sunni Muslim, quickly after he begins finding out at a robust spiritual college. After accepting his award, Saleh devoted his prize to younger Egyptian filmmakers: “Increase your voices, and inform your tales.”
In one of many greater surprises of the night, the very best actress went to Zar Amir Ebrahimi, the star of the broadly disliked true-crime drama “Holy Spider,” from the Iranian-born director Ali Abbasi. She performs a journalist who faces the indifference and misogyny of the police as she tracks down a serial killer. One of the best actor prize was given to Tune Kang-ho, the good South Korean actor (“Parasite”), for his delicate, soulful efficiency as a child trafficker in “Dealer,” the newest from the Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda.
A particular prize to commemorate the competition’s seventy fifth anniversary was given to Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, who have been in competitors once more with “Tori and Lokita,” about two undocumented African immigrants in a merciless, profoundly inhospitable Belgium. The Dardennes are among the many most justly honored filmmakers within the historical past of Cannes, having gained the Palme twice (for “Rosetta” in 1999 and “The Baby” in 2005). This award was genuinely-earned.
