The jury, chaired by Swedish director Ruben Östlund, has unveiled its laureates for the 76th edition of the Cannes Film Festival. Justine Triet received the top prize for her film "Anatomy of a Fall", a courtroom drama about a woman accused of murdering her husband. Our film critic Lisa Nesselson and culture editor Eve Jackson analyse the prizes and go over the best moments of the festival.
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00:00 [Music]
00:07 Hello from closing night at the Cannes Film Festival.
00:12 I'm here with our film critic Lisa Nettleson.
00:14 How have these two-week film watching marathon been for you?
00:18 Satisfactory, adequate with a few highlights.
00:22 For me it hasn't been a banner year, but the film critic for the New York Times would disagree about that.
00:27 Okay, well the verdict is in and this year's Golden Palm Cannes top prize goes to
00:32 courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall from Justine Trillet.
00:36 [Speaking French]
00:40 This year the country was affected by historical, unanimous and powerful protest of a pension reform.
00:46 [Applause]
00:49 This protest was denied and repressed in a shocking way.
00:53 This power is showing its face in several places.
01:00 Of course socially it's the most shocking, but we can also see it in other spheres of society, including cinema.
01:13 I don't know, you come here, okay, with maybe your opinion and you tell me who Samuel was and what we were going through.
01:25 But what you say is just a little part of the whole situation, you know.
01:34 I mean sometimes a couple is kind of a chaos and everybody is lost, no?
01:43 And sometimes we fight together and sometimes we fight alone and sometimes we fight against each other, that happens.
01:50 Describe the film and why you think it won this year's top prize.
01:54 Ah, well it's a courtroom drama, those are always welcome.
01:59 It has a rather phenomenal central performance by Sandra Huller who is also in another film in competition that won a prize this evening.
02:07 So we see her versatility, but basically it's about, we're being told often now that we should listen to women, absolutely, and that we should believe them.
02:17 It's about a woman whose husband is found splat face down off a roof of their house in the snow.
02:25 And some people believe that she had something to do with him ending up in that position.
02:30 They have a visually impaired son who has heightened hearing and may or may not have been a witness to what really happened.
02:37 Well she was one of seven female directors in this year's competition, Up for the Palm Door, a record.
02:43 Here's actress Jane Fonda who presented the prize.
02:47 Exciting to be back at the Cannes Film Festival, huh? First time I came was 1963.
02:57 There were no women directors competing at that time, and it never even occurred to us that there was something wrong with that.
03:06 We've come a long way.
03:13 But we have a long way to go.
03:16 Well that was the winner of this year's top prize.
03:18 Before we talk about the other awards, let's look back at some of the top moments of this year's Cannes Film Festival.
03:24 The stars have been out in force.
03:26 Leonardo DiCaprio, Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson and Harrison Ford.
03:30 He was here with the fifth installment of Indiana Jones.
03:34 He is such a legend.
03:36 Here he is at the press conference after the premiere of the film, and he was asked a question from Australian journalist Helen Barlow.
03:45 I think you're still very hot.
03:54 We were stunned to see you take your shirt off in the second scene.
03:59 And you've still got it.
04:01 How do you keep fit?
04:04 I have been blessed with this body.
04:20 Thanks for noticing.
04:24 Blessed with this body was a great response and made us all laugh at the festival.
04:29 You enjoyed the film, didn't you?
04:30 I did.
04:31 Harrison Ford is a handsome physical specimen, but he's also a real actor.
04:36 It was so clear that what he loves is to perform, to get into the heart of a character.
04:41 He spoke about how much he enjoys playing Indiana Jones.
04:45 I think they found interesting things to do with him at an advanced age.
04:49 They threw in Nazis again.
04:50 There's a lot of Nazis this year.
04:52 The hottest ticket in town was Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon with Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro.
04:59 Tell us about the story.
05:01 It's about a true chapter, alas, in American history where the Osage Indian tribe just happened to be on reservation land
05:11 that was so valuable in terms of the oil that they found on it that the per capita wealth of each of those Native Americans
05:19 was higher than anybody else in America about 100 years ago.
05:23 And of course, when there are natural resources anywhere on earth, other people covet them.
05:28 The indigenous people don't stand a chance.
05:30 So it's a very twisted love story about trying to amass wealth and after a while thinking the means justify the ends.
05:39 But of course, they do not.
05:41 And of course, very long film as well, over three hours.
05:43 Leonardo DiCaprio is a Cannes regular.
05:46 He's been here over the years with four feature films, including Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
05:52 and Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby.
05:54 He talks about working with Martin Scorsese, who he calls Marty.
05:59 His ferocity and wanting to tell the truth about these stories, no matter how ugly, no matter how bizarre,
06:05 no matter how uncomfortable is his mastery and his respect for cinema's history, what's been done before him,
06:16 the influence of the great directors from his past that have made him the director that he is, is just unparalleled.
06:27 And he's been able to define himself as the singular director of our time.
06:34 Like all of you, I'm just constantly in awe of his ability to continue telling the truth the way he does,
06:42 with his characters and with his stories.
06:44 Killers of the Flower Moon wasn't in this year's competition.
06:48 Let's have a look at some of the other winners now.
06:50 Now, there are two runner up prize from the Palm Door, the Grand Prix and the Jury Prize.
06:55 And the Grand Prix went to The Zone of Interest by Jonathan Glazer.
06:58 This was actually a favorite to win, wasn't it? An Auschwitz drama.
07:01 If you're looking for audacity and formal cinematic skill, this one is way up there.
07:08 It's the story, I mentioned the actress Sandra Miller, who is in the winning film.
07:14 She plays a wife and mother whose husband happens to be in charge of Auschwitz.
07:19 And so they're trying to raise their children, their beautiful Aryan children, in a happy home.
07:24 And right on the other side of the wall, 12,000 people a day are being obliterated.
07:29 So you ask yourself, how could that have happened?
07:32 And this movie attempts to show you that people can sort of look the other way, literally.
07:38 And this is loosely based on a book of the same name, written by British author Martin Amis,
07:44 who eerily died the day this was shown.
07:47 I want to honor the memory of Martin Amis and to thank him.
07:51 The perpetrator perspective in his novel was our catalyst.
07:55 I'm so grateful that we got to show the film to him.
07:58 Some of the other prizes now, the Jewelry Prize went to Fallen Leaves from Finnish director Ari Karasmati.
08:05 You like this one?
08:06 I liked it enormously.
08:07 This is a melancholy, bittersweet, really kind of funny, offbeat romance.
08:13 And it is absolutely a movie to see in a room full of people because there's a lot of silly humor,
08:19 although the characters, as Karasmati's characters often are, seem pretty permanently depressed.
08:26 But perhaps love will rescue our two protagonists.
08:30 The Best Director was awarded to a film I liked very much, Pot au Feu, which actually is a French word.
08:36 I don't think anyone in the English-speaking world is going to know what it is, but it's a French dish.
08:40 It's directed by Franco-Vietnamese Tran Anh Hung, and it is a love letter to French food,
08:45 starring Juliette Binoche and France's favorite actor of the moment, Benoit Magimel.
08:51 I love this. Take a look.
08:55 Wine.
08:56 Yes, sparkling wine, bravo.
08:58 Parsley, thyme, bay leaves.
09:05 Cumin.
09:10 Ginger.
09:14 Cloves.
09:16 Go on.
09:18 That's all, I think.
09:22 And also paprika, cognac, and to reduce the acidity of the wine, we add gooseberry jelly.
09:29 And there you go.
09:31 You know how to make the Bourguignotte sauce. Bravo.
09:34 That was Pot au Feu, a love letter to French gastronomy.
09:39 Now let's move on to the Best Actor prize, which went to a Japanese actor, Koji Yakusho,
09:45 who plays a soulful cleaner in Wim Wenders' Imperfect Days.
09:49 He looks a bit like a professor, he holds himself a bit like a priest, and he's a toilet cleaner.
09:54 He's a toilet cleaner, and he makes that seem like a possible vocation,
09:59 a way to be at peace with the world, at harmony with yourself.
10:03 He's an accepting, curious, wonderful man.
10:06 And I think it's very interesting, people forget this is a completely international festival.
10:12 Wim Wenders is a German director who has worked in English,
10:17 and here he's working in Japanese, and the story is delightful and international.
10:24 Lovely to watch. The Best Actress went to Merv Dizdar for About Dry Grasses.
10:30 Now this is from the Turkish director Nuri Bilgesaylor, who won the Palme d'Or for Winter Sleep some years ago.
10:36 It's a look at a disgruntled high school teacher who gets into trouble because of his relationship,
10:42 or not relationship, we don't really ever find out, but with a student.
10:46 That is exactly what it's about, sort of.
10:49 And the woman who won Best Actress, the look on her face in the audience, she was so stunned.
10:54 Obviously, people who are being considered for a prize, they ask them to stay if they're already here,
11:00 to come back if they went back to their own country, so she knew maybe the film had gotten something,
11:05 but she didn't think it was for her.
11:08 And she made a very interesting comment, which was that she didn't have to do any research for the part,
11:13 because it's about a woman who's getting messed about with by men and oppressed,
11:19 and isn't really able to express herself, and so she said, being a Turkish woman, she knew how to do that.
11:24 And Lisa, we're out of time, just a quick word, what was your favourite film of the festival, your highlight?
11:28 My favourite film probably wasn't a film, it was probably the opportunity to be in the same room with Jane Fonda,
11:36 the woman who won Top Prize tonight, was so fortunate to receive it from her hands.
11:41 What an amazing woman. She said she came to Cannes in 1963, and she said this town was a bit sleepier
11:49 than what we'd been experiencing for two weeks.
11:52 Okay, well Lisa, it's all over now, that's it from us. You can have a rest, have a lie down,
11:57 and thank you so much for watching, you can catch up with all of our daily shows throughout the festival,
12:01 we've been doing a round-up of what's been going on here, online at france24.com.
12:06 Thanks for watching, see you next week from Paris.
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