CANNES, France (AP) — Swedish director Ruben Ostlund’s class-struggle comedy “Triangle of Sadness” won the Palme d’Or at the 75th Cannes Film Festival on Saturday, giving Ostlund one of cinema’s most prestigious awards. for the second time.
Ostlund, whose art-world entry “The Square” won the Palme in 2017, pulled off the rare feat of winning Cannes’ top prize for consecutive films. “Triangle of Sadness”, starring Woody Harrelson as a Marxist yacht captain and a climactic scene with crawling vomiting, takes the satire even further.
“We wanted after the screening (for people) to hang out and have something to say,” Ostlund said. “We all agree that what’s unique about cinema is that we watch it together. So we have to keep something to talk about, but we also have to have fun and be entertained.
The awards were selected by a nine-member jury led by French actor Vincent Lindon and presented on Saturday at a closing ceremony at Cannes’ Grand Lumière.
The second jury prize, the Grand Prix, was shared between Belgian director Lukas Dhont tender childhood drama “Close”, about two 13-year-old boys whose bond is tragically separated after their intimacy is mocked by their classmates; and “Stars at Noon” by French film legend Claire Denis an adaptation by Denis Johnson with Margaret Qualley as a journalist in Nicaragua.
The director’s award went to South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook (“Oldboy,” “The Handmaiden”) for his twisty film noir “Decision to Leave,” a romance fused with police procedural.
Korean star Song Kang Ho has been named Best Actor for his performance in Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s ‘Broker’, about a Korean family searching for a home for an abandoned baby.
“I would like to thank everyone who appreciates Korean cinema,” said Song, who also starred in Bong Joon Ho’s Palme d’Or film “Parasite” at Cannes three years ago.
Best Actress went to Zar Amir Ebrahimi for her performance as a journalist in Ali Abbasi’s ‘Holy Spider,’ a thriller about a serial killer targeting sex workers in the Iranian religious city of Mashhad. Violent and graphic, “Holy Spider” was not allowed to shoot in Iran and was made in Jordan. Accepting the award, Ebrahimi said the film depicts “everything that is impossible to show in Iran”.
The jury prize was shared between the friendship tale “The Eight Mountains”, by Charlotte Vandermeersch and Felix Van Groeningen, and “EO”, by Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski, on the journey of a donkey through modern Europe. ruthless.
“I would like to thank my donkeys,” said Skolimowski, who then thanked the six donkeys used in the film by name.
The jury also awarded a special prize at the 75th Cannes to Belgian directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, twice Palmees and regularly present at the festival, for their immigrant drama “Tori et Lokita”. Swedish-Egyptian filmmaker Tarik Saleh won Best Screenplay at Cannes for ‘Boy From Heaven,’ a thriller set in Cairo’s Al-Azhar Mosque.
The prize for the best first film, the Caméra d’Or, was awarded to Riley Keough and Gina Gammell for “War Pony”, a drama on the Pine Ridge Reservation produced in collaboration with Oglala Lakota and Sicangu Lakota citizens.
Saturday’s closing ceremony closed a Cannes that attempted to completely resuscitate France’s annual extravaganza which was canceled in 2020 by the pandemic and saw modest crowds last year. This year’s festival too unfolded against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, that sparked red carpet protests and dialogue about the purpose of cinema in wartime.
Last year, the French body horror thriller “Titanium” won the first prize at Cannes, making director Julia Decournau the second female filmmaker to win the Palme. In 2019, Bong Joon Ho’s ‘Parasite’ triumphs at Cannes before do the same at the Oscars.
This year, the biggest Hollywood films at Cannes — “Elvis”Top Gun: Maverick“Three thousand years of nostalgia” – played outside the programming of 21 films in competition at Cannes. But their presence helped restoring glamor to Cannes after the pandemic curtailed the festival for the past two years.
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