Cannes 2017: The Square Wins the Palme d’Or

The jury for the 70th Cannes Film Festival—Pedro Almodóvar (president), Maren Ade, Jessica Chastain, Fan Bingbing, Agnès Jaoui, Park Chan-wook, Will Smith, Paolo Sorrentino, and Gabriel Yared—has presented this year’s Palme d’Or to Ruben Östlund’s The Square.

A special 70th Anniversary Award goes to Nicole Kidman, who’s appeared in four films at the festival this year.

The Grand Prix goes to Robin Campillo’s BPM (Beats Per Minute).

Sofia Coppola wins the Best Director award for The Beguiled.

Joaquin Phoenix wins the Best Actor award for his performance in Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Here.

Diane Kruger wins the Best Actress award for her performance in Fatih Akin's In the Fade.

The Jury Prize: Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Loveless.

Best Screenplay. It’s a tie. Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou for The Killing of a Sacred Deer and Lynne Ramsay for You Were Never Really Here.

The Camera d’Or, awarded to the best debut feature, goes to Leonor Serraille’s Montparnasse Bienvenúe. The jury: Sandrine Kiberlain (president), Patrick Blossier, Elodie Bouchez, Guillaume Brac, Thibault Carterot, Fabien Gaffez, and Michel Merit.

The Cinéfondation and Short Films Jury headed by Cristian Mungiu and including Clotilde Hesme, Athina Rachel Tsangari, Barry Jenkins, and Eric Khoo, has presented the Palme d’Or for best short film to Qiu Yang’s A Gentle Night. Special mention: Teppo Airaksinen’s The Ceiling.

On Friday, the jury announced the winners of the the 2017 Cinéfondation Prizes. Sixteen student films, chosen out of 2600 entries from around the world, competed.

We have separate entries on the winners of the Un Certain Regard,Directors’ Fortnight, and Critics’ Week awards.

Collateral Awards

The Golden Eye, or L’Oeil d’Or, initiated in 2015 by the Société Civile des Auteurs Multimédia and presented in partnership with the Institut national de l'audiovisuel to the best documentary from any official program, goes to Agnès Varda and JR’s Faces Places. The jury this year: Sandrine Bonnaire, directors Lucy Walker and Dror Moreh, Toronto Film Festival programmer Thom Powers, and film critic Lorenzo Codelli.

The International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) jury comments on its prize-winners:

  • Competition: Robin Campillo’s BPM – Beats Per Minute. “A film about love. A film about life. Life stronger than death. A film as a glimpse of hope.”
  • Un Certain Regard: Kantemir Balagov’s Closeness. “A striking new voice provides an intimate portrait of a closed community. Complete cinema.”
  • First or second film in the parallel sections, Directors' Fortnight or Critic’s Week: Pedro Pinho’s The Nothing Factory (Directors’ Fortnight). “An evocative activist film that blows the boundaries between reality, fiction, theater an sociological discourse leading to an unsettling and provocative cinematic experience.”

The Ecumenical Jury Award goes to Naomi Kawase’s Radiance.

Robin Campillo’s BPM (Beats Per Minute) has won the Queer Palm. Best short film: Yann Gonzalez’s Islands.

Bruno, named after Bruno S., star of Werner Herzog’s The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser and Stroszek, has won the Palm Dog for his performance in The Meyerowitz Stories. The Grand Prix du Jury goes to Lupo, who appears in Léa Mysius’s Ava. And Special Jury prizes have been presented to three security dogs “on behalf of all sniffer dogs saving lives and battling terrorism around the world.”

Cannes 2017 Index. For news and items of interest throughout the day, every day, follow @CriterionDaily.

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