Jane Campion’s jury named one prize winner who was booed as the festival Cannes stuck with its preference for long and slow, awarding Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan for the fourth time. This time he took the Palme d’Or for his 196-minute Winter Sleep. Quentin Tarantino and Uma Thurman presented the award.
2014 Palme d’Or winner Winter Sleep
Cannes operates some interesting rules around its judging, one of which ensures that that all the awards other than the Palme d’Or come with a caveat. In Cannes’ main competition, a film is allowed to win only once so, after the Palme d’Or, all the other awards are really “Best except for possibly the winners of any other category”.
Last year, the jury named actresses Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos alongside director Abdellatif Kechiche as the Palme d’Or winners (for Blue Is The Warmest Colour) so it could present Bérénice Bejo with the Best Actress award for her role in Asghar Farhadi’s The Past.
The directive also takes a lot of the anticipation out of the ceremony. Fromt he first award presented (Best Actor), potential winners of the big prize are being crossed off the list.
The announcement of Jean-Luc Godard’s Goodbye to Language as the winner of a Jury Prize brought boos from the audience. Godard wasn’t present.
Un Certain Regard opening film Party Girl, which won an UCR award for ensemble cast, was named the Camer d’Or winner.
The winners of the Official Competition were:
Palme d’Or
Winter Sleep, Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Grand Prix
The Wonders, Alice Rohrwacher
Best Director
Bennett Miller, Foxcatcher
Jury Prize
Goodbye to Language, Jean-Luc Godard
Mommy, Xavier Dolan
Best Screenplay
Leviathan, Andrei Zviagyntsev & Oleg Negin
Best Actor
Timothy Spall, Mr Turner
Best Actress
Julianne Moore, Maps to the Stars
Camera d’Or
Party Girl, Marie Amachoukeli-Barsacq, Claire Burger, Samuel Theis
Palme d’Or Court Metrage (Short Film)
Leidi, Simón Mesa Soto
Short Film Special Distinctions
Aissa, Clément Trehin-Lalanne
Yes We Love (Ja vi elsker), Hallvar Witzo
