The festival is over. Since there were no premieres scheduled on Saturday, most of the press had already left. However, the Croisette didn’t feel empty at all. Indeed, it has been stormed mostly by very young cinephiles from all over the world taking advantage of the “three days in Cannes” accreditation. Many came with the desire of catching up with screenings, others just for watching the stars walking up the red carpet one last time this year. At the closing ceremony of the 75th Cannes Film Festival, the Grand Theatre Lumière was buzzing full.
On the stage, Vincent Lindon guided the international and transdisciplinary jury – among which weremultitalented Rebecca Hall, the Indian actress Deepika Padukone, the Scandinavians Noomi Rapace and Joachim Trier, the festival veteran Jasmine Trinca, French director Ladj Ly, the master of Iranian cinema Asghar Farhadi and US director Jeff Nichols. Lindon announced how difficult it was in this edition to find an unanimous verdict and argued “we need another mandate!”. The jury awarded many movies with a political content and two artists who live in exile because of their work.
The award for Best female performance went to Zar Amir Ebrahimi. Because of her free and radical spirit, in life as in the character she plays in Holy Spider by Ali Abbasi: a journalist committed to finding a serial killer of prostitutes. A bit like the movie’s character, Ebrahimi too got involved in a scandal back in 2006, when a sex tape of her leaked, and was therefore forced to leave her home country Iran and now resides in France. In her speech, she admitted that this movie saved her life and argued that cinema can do the same also for others living in difficult situations.
Because of addressing the very actual question “What does it mean to be a man today”, South Korean actor Song Kang Ho won the prize for Best male performance in Broker by Koreeda. There he plays a man trying to sell a baby he found on the street but ends up loving him more than his own family. In 2019, Song Kang Ho had already gained international attention for his role in Parasite by Bong Joon-ho, who won the Palm d’Or at the 72nd Cannes festival. Another South Korean artist awarded for best directing was director Park Chan Wook for the movie Decision to Leave.
The prize for best script went to Egyptian-Swedish writer and director Tarik Saleh for Boy from Heaven. He dedicated the award to all his fellow Egyptian filmmakers. Saleh encouraged them to resist the oppressive political system they live in and to keep on sharing their unique stories with the world.
On two occasions, the Jury decided to award two movies ex aequo: the Jury Prize and the Grand Prix. The Jury prize, usually given to the third best film, went jointly to two Italian (co)productions: EO and Le Otto Montagne.
Jerzy Kolimowski, the Polish director of EO, thanked the donkeys that took part in his movie, by name, one by one! For Le Otto Montagne, based on Paolo Cognetti’s best-seller, directors Charlotte Vandermeersch and Felix Van Groeningen welcomed together the prize. On stage, they shared how working on this movie and focusing on the characters’ life challenges, helped them overcome the crisis they were undergoing as a couple. A clumsy yet sweet kiss on stage seemed to underline that.
This kiss was followed by another one between Jury president Lindon and actress Carol Bouquet, one of the most iconic actresses of all time who handed over a Special Prize, created only for this 75th edition, to Dardenne’s brothers for Tori and Lokita.
The other ex aequo award was for the Grand Prix, usually known as the second biggest prize at Cannes. This time it went joinly to Close by young Belgian director Lukas Dhont, who already won the Camera d’Or at Cannes in 2018 for Girl and to Stars at Noon by Clare Denis. Dhont’s announcement was welcomed with great joy by the press but Claire Denis was loudly booed. The director, who only a few months before won the prize for best directing in Berlinale for Both Sides of the Blade, has now won an even more important prize for her film which is based on the homonymous novel by Denis Johnson, a love story taking place during the revolution in Nicaragua.
And the Palm d’Or, as the rumor going around since its premiere suggested, was given by director Alfonso Cuaron to Triangle of Sadness by Ruben Östlund, who already won with The Square in 2017. This social satire with dark outcomes made everyone laugh at first, and hopefully also reflect on the twisted power relations existing in contemporary capitalistic society. Funny enough, any of the yacht parties happening in Cannes during the festival time could have been the setting of the movies’ central part. Might the time for a bit of self-awareness has come on the Croisette?
In the end, the big absents of the party were Nostalgia by Mario Martone end Leila’s Brothers by Saeed Roustaee, which despite the projection, surprisingly didn’t get any recognition by the Cannes Jury, altough Roustaee’s film did win the top prize from the FIPRESCI, an association of film critics. However, what surprises even more, or maybe not even that much, is that for yet another year, the female directors who won a Palm d’Or stay steady at quota two.