Ken Loach took his second Palme d’Or with feature I, Daniel Blake, following his win 10 years ago with The Wind That Shakes The Barley. Accepting, Loach spoke as passionately as he always has about the dangers of extreme wealth and lack of power, of the risks of disenfranchising parts of society and the irony of a film about poverty winning an award in such opulent surroundings.
Houda Benyamina’s Divines won the Camera d’Or, adding to the Special Mention for the SACD award for a French-language film awarded at the Directors Fortnight ceremony.
The official competition jury made a minor break with tradition in awarding two prizes to the same film, something Cannes does sparingly. Forushande (The Salesman) took the Screenplay and Actor awards, Asghar Farhadi taking the former, Shahab Hosseini the latter.
The Best Director award was pronounced a tie between Cristian Mungiu and Olivier Assayas. The Best Actress category, which many observers regarded as the strongest, produced a single winner: Jaclyn Jose in Brillante Mendoza’s Ma’ Rosa.
In the Directors Fortnight selection, Shahrbanoo Sadat’s Wolf and Sheep took the Art Cinema Award. The film was produced by Katja Adomeit, the Danish producer on Daniel Joseph Borgman’s unofficial Denmark-NZ co-production The Weight of Elephants. The film was pitched at Cannes Cinéfondation Residency programme in 2013, and last year won awards and support from Hong Kong’s HAF project market and Busan’s Asian Cinema Fund.
The Cannes Film Festival ran 11 – 21 May. The winners of the various competitions were:
Official Competition
Palme D’Or
I, Daniel Blake, Ken Loach
Grand Prix
Juste La Fin Du Monde (It’s Only The End Of The World), Xavier Dolan
Best Director Ex Æquo
, Personal Shopper
Best Screenplay
Asghar Farhadi, Forushande (The Salesman)
Jury Prize
American Honey, Andrea Arnold
Best Performance By An Actress
Jaclyn Jose in Ma’ Rosa dir. Brillante Mendoza
Best Performance By An Actor
Shahab Hosseini in Forushande (The Salesman) dir. Asghar Farhadi
Vulcan Award of the Technical Artist
Seong-Hie Ryu, for Artistic Direction of Mademoiselle (The Handmaiden) dir. Park Chan-Wook
Short Film Palme d’Or
Timecode, Juanjo Gimenez
Special Mention: A Moça Que Dançou Com O Diabo (The Girl Who Danced With The Devil), João Paulo Miranda Maria
Caméra d’Or
for a first feature from the Official, Critics Week or Directors’ Fortnight programme
Divines, Houda Benyamina (from Directors Fortnight)
Un Certain Regard
Prize Of Un Certain Regard
Hymyilevä Mies (The Happiest Day In The Life Of Olli Mäki), Juho Kuosmanen
Jury Prize
Fuchi Ni Tatsu (Harmonium), Fukada Kôji
Best Director
Matt Ross, Captain Fantastic
Best Screenplay
Delphine Coulin & Muriel Coulin, Voir Du Pays (The Stopover)
Special Prize Un Certain Regard
La Tortue Rouge (The Red Turtle), Michael Dudok De Wit
Directors Fortnight
Feature film awards
Art Cinema Award
Wolf & Sheep, Shahrbanoo Sadat
SACD Award to a French-language film
The Together Project, Solveig Anspach
Special mention: Divines, Houda Benyamina
The Europa Cinemas Label to a European feature film
Mercenary, dir. Sacha Wolff
Short film awards
Illy Prize to a short film
Chasse Royal, Lise Akoka, Romane Gueret
Special mention: The Beast, dir. Miroslav Sikavica
Critics Week
Nespresso Grand Prize
Mimosas, Oliver Laxe
France 4 Visionary Award
for a first or second feature film
Albüm, Mehmet Can Mertoğlu
Leica Cine Discovery Prize For Short Film
Prenjak: In the Year of the Monkey, Wregas Bhanuteja
Awards Given By Partners
Gan Foundation Award For Distribution
Sophie Dulac, French Distributor for One Week And A Day (Shavua Ve Yom) by Asaph Polonsky
SACD Award
Davy Chou And Claire Maugendre, co-writers of Diamond Island
CANAL+ Award for Short Film
L’enfance d’un Chef, Antoine de Bary
FIPRESCI Awards
Official Competition
Toni Erdmann, Maren Ade
Un Certain Regard
Dogs, Bogdan Mirica
Parallel Sections
Raw, Julia Ducournau
Ecumenical Jury Prize
It’s Only the End of the World, Xavier Dolan
Cinéfondation
1st Prize
Anna, Or Sinai
2nd Prize
In The Hills, Hamid Ahmadi
3rd Prize
A Nyalintás Nesze (The Noise Of Licking), Nadja Andrasev
La Culpa, Probablemente (The Guilt, Probably), Michael Labarca
