The sun was out and so were the crowds for the 78th Cannes Film Festival, which took place May 13 to 24. In a year whose wars and regime changes have turned life upside-down for millions, it was perhaps still early days for travel fears and Trump’s plans to slap 100% tariffs on films made outside the U.S. to have a great impact on the festival machine. People got their tickets without undue fuss and quietly stood in long lines for packed screenings. If there were free seats, the rush lines were opened to fill them.
But few voices were raised speaking about the wider world outside. At the opening ceremony, where he received an honorary Palme d’Or from the festival presented by Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro launched a pungent critique of U.S. president Donald Trump and won the applause of the Lumière theatre. Americans are “fighting like hell for a democracy we once took for granted”, he said. “Art looks for truth. Art embraces diversity. That’s why art is a threat.”
Highlights of This Year’s Program
Movies have long been seen as a threat in Iran, where both Iranian directors in competition (Jafar Panahi and Saeed Roustaee) have been hit with prison sentences for their work. Panahi has long resisted the ban that was put on his filmmaking by shooting without official permission in secret, and even if It Was Just an Accident failed to turn on most viewers the same way as some earlier films, no one objected to awarding it the Palme d’Or for Best Film. Its outspoken fury at jailing people for their political beliefs and its explicit description of torture in prison once again showed how fearless Panahi is in the face of very real threats to his liberty. The film is also one of the first to accurately show women appearing in public without covering their hair, a trend that has come out of the Woman Life Freedom movement.
Another big winner was the well-liked Brazilian cross-genre thriller, The Secret Agent, which won both Best Director for Kleber Mendonça Filho and Best Performance by an Actor from Walter Moura. This dark gangster film told at breakneck pace is an exciting watch, but its festival credentials come from the story of a man (played by a deeply melancholy Moura) running for his life during the days of the dictatorship. Though some found it opaque, it was one of the most flamboyant entries in this year’s competition.
Another is The Little Sister, Hafsia Herzi’s joyful lesbian coming-out drama of a young woman (Nadia Melliti) struggling to reconcile her sexuality and her deep Islamic faith. Melliti’s win as Best Actress was an excellent choice by a jury presided over by Juliette Binoche.
Among three experimental titles that took home prizes are Chinese director Bi Gan’s dense hymn to cinema Resurrection (Special Award) and the two films that split the Jury Prize ex-aequo, Olivier Laxe’s Sirat from Spain and Mascha Schilinski’s Sound of Falling. Though their films divided audiences, these fresh voices can be counted on being heard again in the coming years.
The film selection in the other sections was strong overall. In Un Certain Regard, The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo by Diego Céspedes won the top prize and A Poet by Simon Mesa Soto the Jury Prize. Both were well-liked films with audience buzz. Also mentioned at the prize ceremony were the well-liked Norah directed by Tawfik Alzaidi and My Father’s Shadow by Akinola Davies Jr.
Over in Directors’ Fortnight, new filmmaker Hasan Hadi won the prestigious Camera d’Or for The President’s Cake, and Lee Sang-il’s Kokuho was a noted as a visually striking and accessible tale of Kabuki theater. Meanwhile, Critics’ Week awarded its Grand Prize to A Useful Ghost by Rathapoorn Boombunchachoke, and Imago, Kika and Reedland were much admired.
Japan Leads the Asian Selection
After years of playing second fiddle to South Korea – or maybe even third and fourth, if China and India are included – Japanese cinema returned to the Croisette with a vengeance. Its presence was felt in nearly every section at the festival this year. Just as impressive, however, is the stylistic and geographical diversity of these films.
There’s Chie Hayakawa’s 1980s-set family drama Renoir in competition and Kei Ishigawa’s multiple-timeline, continent-hopping adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s A Pale View of Hills in Un Certain Regard. The Directors’ Fortnight hosted veteran Korean-Japanese auteur Lee Sang-il’s celebration of the traditional art of kabuki in Kokuho (“National Treasure”) and 26-year-old Yuiga Danzuka’s Tokyo-set Brand New Landscape. In Cannes Classics, Mikio Naruse’s 1955 masterpiece, Drifting Clouds, reappeared in a 4K restoration.
At the extreme end of things was the midnight screening title Exit 8, a live-action adaptation of a cult video game by novelist-filmmaker Genki Kawamura. The breakout Japanese filmmaker at Cannes this year, however, was the Tokyo-born, Le Fresnoy graduate Momoko Seto. Her first feature, Dandelion’s Odyssey, is a cross between a precise scientific documentary and a Pixar animation movie, as we follow four dandelion seedlings flight from an apocalyptic planet and their search for fertile soil away from their home. The standing ovation she received after the film’s premiere in Critics’ Week could put some of the competition titles to shame.
Such universal acclaim was beyond Bi Gan, whose Resurrection perhaps ranks as the most polarizing film in the running for the Palme d’Or this year. While the press shows ended half-empty, the gala screening at the Lumiere Theatre next door finished with the audience giving the Chinese filmmaker long, rapturous applause. Nearly three hour’s long, this film maudit spans wildly different styles (from silent movies to noir, and from surrealism to social realism) in its five chapters, at once an indecipherable historical epic and a phantasmagoric salute to the history of cinema.
The breakout Korean star at Cannes this year is actually French. Well-known for her leading role in Davy Chou’s Return to Seoul, Park Ji-min – who was born in South Korea but relocated to France as a baby – appeared in three films directed by women. While her roles in Rebecca Zlotowski’s out-of-competition A Private Life and Anna Cazenave Cambet’s UCR entry Love Me Tender are relatively minor, she delivered a powerful performance opposite Nadia Melliti in Hafsia Herzi’s The Little Sister.
A Final Mysterious Incident
In the end, the most talked-about incident of the 78th edition was one the festival would happily have done without. On the last day, at 10.02 AM local time, a region-wide power outage — which lasted until late afternoon and shut down Cannes stores and restaurants — disrupted all the screenings scheduled at the Cinéum multiplex and scotched the traditional Official Selection reruns. In a fitting metaphor for how Cannes positions itself in the festival ecosystem, the Palais and its theaters were still functional, thanks to having their own backup generator, and stood as the lone beacon of light in the middle of a darkened city that at times resembled the post-apocalyptic London in Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later.
–Deborah Young, Clarence Tsui and Max Borg contributed to this story
