Source: Twitter
Cannes, May 29: In a decision that took nobody by surprise, the jury of the 75th Cannes Film Festival awarded the Palme d'Or to Swedish director Ruben Ostlund's "Triangle of Sadness" at a closing ceremony here on Saturday night.
The satirical but savage attack on a world where wealth and privilege hold untrammelled sway over humanity and decency is Ostlund's second film to win the Cannes Film Festival's top prize. He had won the Palme d'Or in 2017 for "The Square", a no less corrosive takedown of the hypocrisies of the art world.
Ostlund is now the ninth director to have won the Palme d'Or twice. He joins a list that has Francis Ford Coppola, Shohei Imamura, Bille August, Emir Kusturica, Michael Haneke, Ken Loach and the Dardenne Brothers.
With no film emerging as the odds-on favourite and pulling ahead of the rest of the contenders, this was one of the stiffest Cannes competitions in recent years. Yet, the win for "Triangle of Sadness" was expected.
The best director prize went to Park Chan-wook for his work on "Decision to Leave", which marks a clear departure for the Korean director in terms a tone and mood.
The Grand Prix, the prize for the second-best film in Competition, witnessed a tie between 75-year-old French director Claire Denis' "Stars at Noon", set in mid-1980s Nicaragua, and young Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont's sophomore venture "Close", the story of a friendship between two teenage boys.
The Jury Prize, regarded but not clearly designated as the third prize, went jointly to "Le Otto Montagne" (The Eighth Mountain), directed by the Belgian filmmaking couple Charlotte Vandermeersch and Felix van Groeningen, and octogenarian Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski for "EO".
The protagonist of "EO", a contemporary interpretation of Robert Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar, is a donkey. "I would like to say thank you to my donkeys," the director said before going on to name each of the donkeys that acted in his remarkable film.
For "Tori and Lokita", the Dardenne Brothers, Jean-Pierre and Luc, won a Special Prize handed out to mark the 75 th anniversary of the festival.
The Camera d'Or for the best directorial debut at the festival went to "War Pony", an American film by the team of actress Riley Keough and producer Gina Gammell. Keough, 32, is the eldest grandchild of Elvis Presley, a film about whose life directed by Baz Luhrmann premiered in Cannes earlier in the week.
A Camera d'Or – Special Mention was won by Japanese director Chie Hayakawa for her first film "Plan 75".
Belgian-French actress Virginie Efira served as the master of ceremonies at a closing ceremony that saw each one of the three Belgian films in Competition – "Close", "Le Otto Mantagne" and "Tori and Lokita" – bag an award.
Korean actor Song Kang-ho was adjudged the best actor in Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda's Busan-set drama "Broker", about a cobbled-together family reminiscent of the one in the director's 2018 Palme d'Or.
Song Kang-ho had a leading role in Bong Joon-ho's 2019 Palme d'Or winner "Parasite".
The best actress prize was snagged by Iranian actress Zar Amir Ebrahami, the female lead of "Holy Spider", directed by Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi.
The best screenplay award went to Egyptian-Swedish director Tarik Saleh for "Boy from Heaven".
The 2022 Cannes Film Festival jury was presided over by veteran French actor Vincent Lindon. It included India's Deepika Padukone alongside Noomi Rapace, Joachim Trier, Jasmine Trinca, Jedd Nichols, Asghar Farhadi, Rebecca Hall and Ladj Ly.
The short film Palme d'Or went to China's Chen Jianying's "The Water Murmurs". A short film by Nepal's Abinash Bikram Shah's "Lori" won a Special Mention, adding another trophy to an encouraging haul of awards at the festival by directors from the Indian subcontinent.
Earlier in the day, Delhi-based Shaunak Sen's "All That Breathes" won the 2022 L'Oeil d'Or (Golden Eye) for the best documentary at the 75th Cannes Film Festival, making it two in succession for India. The film was screened as part of the festival's Special Screenings line-up.
"All That Breathes" is about two Delhi brothers Nadeem and Saud who, amid the city's worsening air and deteriorating social fabric, devote their lives to saving migratory black kites that are at the mercy of mankind's unthinking ways. In January, the documentary won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Documentary at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.
Sen's win is India's second in Cannes in two years. In 2021, Payal Kapadia's "A Night of Knowing Nothing", which played in the parallel Semaine de la Critique (Cannes Critics' Week) took home the L'Oeil d'Or.
Pakistani film "Joyland", written and directed by debutant Saim Sadiq, won the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section of the prestigious gala on Friday, becoming the first-ever film from the subcontinent to bag the award.
"Joyland", a drama about a Lahore family in the firm grip of deep-rooted patriarchy, also won the Prix Queer Palm, awarded by Jury chaired by filmmaker Catherine Corsini on Friday. One of the central characters in the film is a transwoman played by a real-life transwoman Alina Khan.
