The 79th annual Cannes Film Festival took place from May 12 to May 23 in Cannes, France. South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook served as jury president for the main competition, which consisted of 22 international feature films. Other notable jury members included American actress Demi Moore, Chinese director Chloé Zhao, and Swedish actor Stellan Skårsgard.
Beginning with the top prize, Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu won the Palme d’Or for his film “Fjord.” The drama stars Renate Reinsve and Sebastian Stan as a religious Romanian couple who move to a small Norwegian town and become subject to investigation for child abuse. This marks the second time Mungiu took home the prestigious award, the first being for his 2007 film “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.”
The runner-up prize, the Grand Prix, went to Andrey Zvyagintsev’s “Minotaur,” a Russian political thriller set in 2022 during the Russia-Ukraine war. The film, which was praised for masterfully blending individual turmoil with larger-scale political corruption, centers on a struggling business executive who suddenly finds out his wife has been unfaithful.
The award for best director tied between Pawel Pawlikowski for his biographical film “Fatherland” and Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi for the triptych queer romance “The Black Ball.” Starring Spanish actress Penélope Cruz, “The Black Ball” received a 20-minute standing ovation, earning the longest standing ovation at this year’s event and coming very near to the 22-minute record in the festival’s history set by “Pan’s Labyrinth” in 2006.
Both the best actor and actress performance awards were split between pairs working on the same film — actors Valentin Campagne and Emmanuel Macchia for the queer war drama “Coward” and actresses Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto for the intimate, dialogue-driven “All of a Sudden.”
Critics have characterized this year’s lineup as underwhelming compared to the strength of last year’s festival. They called works by veteran auteurs derivative, reviewing acclaimed Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s “Parallel Tales” as a shallow, lackluster take on familiar themes.
This year’s Cannes was similarly lackluster, with the absence of major Hollywood titles leaving the event noticeably less star studded. Many big studios opted out of the event, shying away from notoriously tough French critics, incredibly expensive marketing bills, or misaligned production timelines.
No worries, though — Cannes only marks the beginning of the film awards season. Winners like “Fjord” and “The Black Ball” might already be garnering Oscars Best Picture buzz, but there’s even more to come. Cinephiles can look forward to the Venice Film Festival and Telluride Film Festival in early September to uncover more hits before they reach the big screen.
