Over the years, Iran’s dissident filmmaker Jafar Panahi has mastered the art of defying film bans and smuggling his work out to foreign festivals – once on a USB stick hidden inside a cake.
This time, the dissident filmmaker was present in person to pick up cinema’s most prestigious award, a richly deserved Palme d’Or for “It Was Just an Accident”, his latest indictment of state oppression in Iran.
A punchy political thriller, it marked Panahi’s first trip to the French Riviera gathering since 2003 due to repeated prison terms and travel bans.
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The second-place Grand Prix went to Norwegian director Joachim Trier's "Sentimental Value", a moving tale about a quietly fractured family starring Renate Reinsve and Elle Fanning, which was a darling of the press.
Another critics’ favourite, Oliver Laxe’s techno-infused road movie “Sirat”, about a father and son joining a group of itinerant ravers in the deserts of Morocco, took a joint Jury Prize with Mascha Schilinski’s “Sound of Falling”, about four generations of girls who spend their youth on the same farm in Germany.
Best Director went to Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “The Secret Agent”, a stylish thriller about an academic on the run in the cruel days of Brazil’s 1970s military dictatorship, by the Cannes veteran who won the Jury Prize six years ago for “Bacurau”.
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“The Secret Agent” was twice rewarded with the Best Actor prize going to Wagner Moura, while striking newcomer Nadia Melliti took Best Actress for her turn as a French-Algerian teen struggling to reconcile her cultural identity with her emerging sexuality in Hafsia Herzi’s competition debut “The Little Sister”.
The Dardenne brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc won the Best Screenplay award for their deeply moving drama “Young Mothers”. Set in a shelter for teen mothers, it follows five young women as they navigate the challenges of early motherhood, amid drug addiction, depression and tense encounters with prospective adoptive parents.
It market the Belgian duo's 10th time in competition in Cannes, 26 years after they won their first of two Palme d’Or awards for “Rosetta”.
Screening in the Directors' Fortnight, which runs parallel to the festival, Hasan Hadi’s “The President’s Cake”, set in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, won the Camera d'Or for the best debut feature. Cinema publication Deadline said it was “head and shoulders above” some of the films in the running for the Palme d'Or, and “could turn out to be Iraq's first nominee for an Oscar”.
In shadow of war
Saturday's closing ceremony capped a tumultuous day in Cannes that saw a major power outrage briefly halt screenings and leave a stretch of the French Riviera without electricity.
“It’s the beginning of the end,” declared a hair salon customer somewhat cinematically, curlers still clinging to her hair, as residents and festivalgoers spilled into the streets and switched-off traffic lights brought road chaos.
In the gargantuan Palais des Festivals, however, the screenings soon resumed as power generators got the world’s biggest and glitziest film festival back into action, wrapping up a 78th edition that was described as the most political in decades.
The ongoing Israeli onslaught on the Gaza Strip was a frequent talking point during the festival, which opened with a tribute to Fatma Hassona. The 25-year-old Palestinian photojournalist is the subject of “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk”, a documentary recording her efforts to capture the destruction in Gaza before she was killed in an Israeli strike last month.
Read moreFatma Hassona's death in Gaza was ‘targeted’ killing, film director tells Cannes
There was no shortage of off-screen politics throughout the festival as film stars took turns in rubbishing US President Donald Trump and his threats to slap crippling tariffs on foreign films, which threw a wet blanket over the all-important Cannes Film Market.
Screen legend Robert De Niro set the tone on the opening night with a blistering attack on America’s “philistine” president, urging the industry to join the “fight for democracy” as he picked up a career Palme d’Or.
French cinema’s belated reckoning with widespread sex abuse in the industry was another hot topic in the early stages of the festival, which opened the same day Gérard Depardieu was convicted of groping two women on a film set and handed a suspended jail term.
While a ban on red-carpet nudity prompted accusations of policing women’s dress, organisers' decision to bar a French actor from a gala premiere over rape allegations was seen as a radical change of stance for a festival that previously only paid lip service to the #MeToo movement.
Read moreAs Cannes gets serious about #MeToo, has French cinema finally turned a corner?
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