La Presse at the 77th Cannes Film Festival | The Palme d’Or goes to Anora by Sean Baker

(CANNES) It is American independent cinema that the jury of the 77 competition^e Cannes Festival, chaired by American actress and filmmaker Greta Gerwig, chose to reward Saturday evening by awarding the Palme d’Or to Anoraby Sean Baker.

The filmmaker of barbie and of Lady Birdmoved, described this work about a sex worker as a “magnificent film, full of humanity”, which “made us laugh and broke our hearts”.

Anora chronicles the Las Vegas marriage of a Brooklyn escort (Mikey Madison) to the young party-loving son of a Russian oligarch, which turns sour when the latter’s parents learn the news. They will do everything in their power to have the union annulled, by putting trusted men and strong-armers after the couple.

If the filmmaker of The Florida Project and of Red Rocket initially suggests that it is staging a Cinderella tale in the style of Pretty Woman, we quickly understand that this will not be the case. Sean Baker once again succeeds in creating attractive atmospheres around marginal characters, but his plot is based on a series of redundant adventures.

“We have to fight to keep cinema alive and make films intended for theaters,” declared the 53-year-old filmmaker as he went to collect his prize. “The future of cinema is where it all began,” he added.

Sean Baker praised two filmmakers in this competition “who have had a profound impact” on his cinema: Francis Ford Coppola, who was present at the closing ceremony to present an honorary Palme d’Or to George Lucas, as well as the Canadian David Cronenberg. The two veterans were unsurprisingly left off the list.

A record of good performance, for a Festival which will not go down in history as a great vintage. Some excellent films presented at the end changed the situation, but in my opinion there were no works of the caliber at Cannes this year.Anatomy of a fall Or The Zone of Interestrespectively Palme d’Or and Grand Prix of 2023, to make it a memorable edition.

That said, the luminous and poetic All We Imagine As Light by Payal Kapadia well deserved her Grand Jury Prize. The 38-year-old filmmaker took the opportunity to hope that the Cannes Film Festival would not wait another 30 years before selecting a new Indian film in competition. Miguel Gomes expressed a similar wish earlier in the evening about Portuguese cinema, when he went to collect the Directing Prize for Grand Tourwhile paying tribute to Manoel de Oliveira.

My favorite film from this selection, Emilia Pérez by Jacques Audiard, a musical thriller set in the world of Mexican drug cartels, won the Jury Prize, awarded to the French filmmaker by Quebecer Xavier Dolan. The jury also awarded the Best Actress Prize to the entire cast ofEmilia Pérez : Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz and Karla Sofia Gascon.

The latter, a transgender Spanish actress, delivered the most moving speech of the ceremony, hosted by Camille Cottin. “To all of you who have made us suffer, it’s time for you to change! » she declared towards transphobes. I know a few who must have choked on their crème de menthe…

The spectators at the Grand Théâtre Lumière gave a long ovation to the Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof, whose brilliant The seeds of the wild fig tree won the Special Jury Prize (as well as the Ecumenical Jury Prize). The filmmaker, who fled Iran last week, where he was sentenced to eight years in prison, dedicated his prize “to young women of boundless courage” who challenge the totalitarian regime in Tehran.

The French filmmaker of another of my favorites from the competition, the delirious film by body horror The Substance, Coralie Fargeat, winner of the Screenplay Prize, called on all women to make the revolution. “I believe we can do this, all together,” she said.

The American Jesse Plemons, polymorphous actor in the sketch film by Yorgos Lanthimos, Kinds of Kindnessreceived his Best Actor Award in absentia, without planning a speech. His wife Kirsten Dunst won the Best Actor Award for Melancholia by Lars von Trier in 2011 and traveled to Cannes, she…

The Golden Camera for best first feature film, all sections combined, was awarded to Armandby Halfdan Ullmann Tondel, grandson of Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann.

Like many actresses, directors and producers who demonstrated in Cannes on Saturday under the banner of the Warriors of Peace, Lebanese filmmaker Nadine Labaki (Capernaum), member of the competition jury, and the president of the Cinef jury, the Belgian actress Lubna Azabal (Fires), took advantage of their respective platforms during the evening to demand the release of the hostages in Palestine and call for a ceasefire. “It is not normal to find it normal that thousands of children die from bombs in their sleep,” recalled Nadine Labaki.

This is an image that truly breaks the heart.

The hosting costs for this report were paid by the Cannes Film Festival, which had no say over it.