The winner of this year’s prestigious Palme d’Or for the best film at Cannes has sparked a political row after using her acceptance speech to launch a scathing attack on the cultural policies of the French government.
Accepting the award for courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall, director Justine Triet said the “commercialisation of culture this neoliberal government supports is in the process of breaking France’s cultural exception”.
She added that without that cultural legacy she “wouldn’t be here today”.
Triet’s speech also criticised French president Emmanuel Macron, who last month signed into law a controversial bill raising the retirement age in France from 62 to 64 – despite widespread protest.
Triet said her country had “suffered from historic protests over the reform of the pension system”, but that “these protests were denied … repressed in a shocking way”.
The stinging remarks drew a swift response from the French culture minister, Rima Abdul Malak, who said she was happy to see the award go to a French director, but had been “flabbergasted” by Triet’s speech.
“This film would not have seen the light of day without our French film financing model, which allows for a diversity that is unique in the world. Let’s not forget that,” she wrote on Twitter.
The winning film, starring German actor Sandra Hüller, is the French director’s second to be selected to compete on the Cote D’Azur, after her dark comedy Sibyl.
Hüller, best known for her role in 2016 comedy-drama Toni Erdmann, also featured in another leading contender for the top prize at Cannes this year, British director Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest. In Triet’s film she plays a writer forced to defend herself as the main suspect in her husband’s murder.
The sought-after top film prize, awarded by a team of judges that was led by last year’s winner – director of The Triangle of Sadness, Ruben Östlund – was presented by veteran Hollywood actor Jane Fonda at the annual film festival’s sparkling closing ceremony.
“The first time that I came was 1963,” said Fonda, as she prepared to give the famous award to Triet. “The festival was smaller then. There were no women directors competing at that time and it never even occurred to us that there was something wrong with that. We have come a long way, but we have a long way to go.”
Seven female directors, Fonda pointed out, had films in the competition this year. “It is historic,” said Fonda. “But one day it will be normal.”
Triet, who is the third woman to win the prestigious award, beat other contenders including British director Ken Loach, a festival favourite, whose new film The Old Oak premiered at the Palais at the end of the festival.
Glazer did not walk away empty-handed; he won the grand prize for The Zone of Interest, his adaptation of a Martin Amis novel that nightmarishly describes the domestic concerns of a Nazi family who live in close proximity to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland towards the end of the second world war.
Glazer is best known for his critical hits Sexy Beast and Under the Skin, a sci-fi dystopia which starred Scarlett Johansson as an alien. Accepting the award, he said: “This is an honour beyond my dreams. I want to honour the memory of Martin Amis and am so glad that I got to show the film to him.”
The best acting prize went to the Japanese acting legend Koji Yakusho, for his portrayal of a reticent, tree-loving Tokyo toilet cleaner in Wim Wenders’s film Perfect Days. It is a performance in which the complexity of the character’s feelings for the natural world around him, and the details of his traumatic past as a member of a well-to-do family, become evident as the story slowly unfolds and he deals with the characters he meets.
Best actress went to Merve Dizdar, star of the Turkish drama About Dry Grasses from director Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Dizdar mesmerised many critics in her role as Nuray, a rural schoolteacher. “I would like to dedicate this prize to all the women who are fighting to overcome difficulties in this world, and to retain hope,” Dizdar said, as she accepted her prize.
Presenting the special jury prize, British actor Orlando Bloom said that cinema’s value was the way it can bridge differences, “not always an easy feat”. He gave the prize to Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki for his film Fallen Leaves, which stars Alma Pöysti as a supermarket clerk who leads a lonely existence until she meets a heavy-drinking construction worker who also seems adrift.
Best director went to Tran Anh Hung for his film The Pot-au-Feu, which features French actors Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel, as a revered chef, as they fall in love in the kitchen.
English (US)