CANNES, France: Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall won the Palme d’Or at the 76th Cannes Film Festival in a ceremony late on Saturday that bestowed the festival’s prestigious top prize on an engrossing, rigorously plotted French courtroom drama that puts a marriage on trial.
Anatomy of a Fall, which stars Sandra Hüller as a writer trying to prove her innocence in her husband’s death, is only the third film directed by a woman to win the Palme d’Or. One of the two previous winners, Julia Ducournau, was on this year’s jury.
Cannes’ Grand Prix, its second prize, went to Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest, a chilling Martin Amis adaptation about a German family living next door to Auschwitz. Hüller also stars in that film. The awards were decided by a jury presided over by two-time Palme winner Ruben Östlund, the Swedish director who won the prize last year for Triangle of Sadness. The ceremony preceded the festival’s closing night film, the Pixar animation Elemental.
Remarkably, the award for Anatomy of a Fall gives the indie distributor Neon its fourth straight Palme winner. Neon, which acquired the film after its premiere in Cannes, also backed Triangle of Sadness, Ducournau’s Titane and Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite, which it steered to a best picture win at the Academy Awards.
Triet was presented the Palme by Jane Fonda, who recalled coming to Cannes in 1963 when, she said, there were no female filmmakers competing “and it never even occurred to us that there was something wrong with that.” This year, a record seven out of the 21 films in competition at Cannes were directed by women. After a rousing standing ovation, Triet, the 44-year-old French filmmaker, spoke passionately about the protests that have roiled France this year over reforms to pension plans and the retirement age. Several protests were held during Cannes this year, but demonstrations were — as they have been in many high-profile locations throughout France — banned from the area around the Palais des Festivals. Protesters were largely relegated to the outskirts of Cannes.
NEW DELHI: An Indian court extended the custody of opposition leader and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal until...
BASRA: Faced with a failing date palm business due to scarce resources, Iraqi farmer Ismail Ibrahim has planted...
MEXICO CITY: Dengue cases in the Americas spiked in the first three months of this year by three times the number of...
MOSCOW: Russia has no designs on any Nato country and will not attack Poland, the Baltic states or the Czech Republic...
GRAN CANARIA, Spain: Spanish coastguards rescued 124 migrants, including young children and a person needing a...
GENEVA: Gang violence in Haiti has killed over 1,500 people so far this year, including many children, while dozens...
MANILA/BEIJING: The Philippines will implement countermeasures against “illegal, coercive, aggressive, and dangerous...
LONDON: TikToker Hareem Shah said she has joined UK politics and plans to become a member of the British Parliament in...