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ELLE FANNING AND JOACHIM TRIER, SENTIMENTAL VALUE
CANNES #78 2025: THE AWARDS
PALME D'OR: A SIMPLE ACCIDENT (Jafar Panahi)
GRAND PRIX: SENTIMENTAL VALUE (Joachim Trier)
JURY PRIZE: tie between SIRAT (Oliver Laxe) and THE SOUND OF FALLING (Mascha Schilinski)
BEST DIRECTOR: KLEBER MENDOCA FILHO for THE SECRET AGENT
BEST ACTOR (Competition Films): WAGNOR MOURA (for THE SECRET AGENT by Mendoça Filho)
BEST SCREENPLAY: YOUNG MOTHERS/JEUNES MÈRES( Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)
BEST ACTRESS: NADIA MELLITI (for LA PETITE DERIÈRE)
SPECIAL AWARD: RESURRECTION (Bi Gan)
CAMÉRA D'OR: THE PRESIDENT'S CAKE (Hasan Hadi, in DIRECTOR'S FORTNIGHT), with spefial mention to MY FATHER'S SHADOW (Akinola Davies Jr. in UN CERTAIN REGARD)
QUEER PALM: LA PETITE DERRIÈRE (Hafsia Herzi)
PALM DOG: "PANDA" (in THE LOVE THAT REMAINS by Hlynur Palmason)
UN CERTAIN REGARD AWARDS:
UN CERTAIN REGARD PRIZE: THE MYSTERIOUS GAZE OF THE FLAMINGO by Diego Céspedes
JURY PRIZE: A POET by Simón Mesa Soto
BEST ACTOR: FRANK DILLANE (for URCHIN by Harris Dickinson)
BEST ACTRESS: CLÉO DIARA (for I ONLY REST IN THE STORM by Pedro Pinho)
BEST SCREENPLAY: PILLION by Harry Lighton
BEST DIRECTING: ONCE UPON A TIME IN GAZA by Arab & Tarzan Nasser
Most of my original awards listings above were wrong - I had copied an AI -created list. Dont trust AI! Peter Bradshaw got most of his GUARDIAN predictions wrong. The Oscar Expert's "brother bro" yesterday in his prediction video seemed to do better, but he was more ruminating over alternate possiblities and guessing correctly what films would be scoring somewhere. He seemed to get the PALME D'OR right, but that was a wrong list. He wanted SIRAT,a personal favorite, to win something, and, of course, it did, tied with SOUND OF FALLING for the Jury Prize. Both Bradshaw and "brother bro" knew the top films of the festival; it's hard not to. It's just hard, if not impossible, to guess what they'll get.
As Peter Bradshaw noted in his GUARDIAN roundup, Cannes this year "had a lot to live up to after last year’s award-winners, headline-grabbers and social media meltdowners Anora, The Substance and Emilia Pérez." He wondered if the big fallen palm tree on the Croisette was a sign of . . . something (a partial decline?). But we'll see. Just the lack of big headline-grabbers doesn't mean it wasn't a good festival. These top-mentioned titles all sound really interesting: A SIMPLE ACCIDENT, SENTIMENTAL VALUE, SIRAT, SOUND OF FALLING, THE SECRET AGENT, and the others mentioned in prizes too, are sure to be worth looking for.
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KLEBER MENDOçCA FILHO PICKED UP TWO AWARDS, BEST DIRECTOR & BEST ACTOR FOR WAGNER MOURA, WHO WAS ABSENT
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YOUNG MOTHERS (JEUNES MÈRES) (Jean-Pierre, Luc Dardenne)
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DETAIL FROM THE DARDENNES' YOUNG MOTHERS
David Rooney in his HOLLYWOOD REPORTER review says it's a mistake to think the "stripped-down aesthetic" and humanistic values mean you know what you're getting with the Dardennes: there are always surprises. He also mentions that they have been helping produce Ken Loach's similiarly conceived films from England since 2009. YOUNG MOTHERS is notably more docu-drama than usual for the Belgian brothers, and also focuses this time, which is also different, on multiple stories, finding and following four young mothers and one about to give birth at a maternal support shelter near Liège. Each young woman has her own specific story. Peter Bradshaw's GUARDIAN review awards YOUNG MOTHERS five out of five stars and summarizes the film as a "poignant, compassionate work of unforced social realism" that shows how "Teen mums are taught how to take care of their babies or prepare them for adoption amid drug addiction, mental illness and family conflict." He says it's "quietly outstanding" and that "gentleness, compassion and love" are its "keynotes." The film presents each of the five mothers and their multiple issues the center helps them deal with, and it lets us fall in love with the babies. The basic question, says Bradshaw, is whether, having rejected abortion as an option, giving up the baby to adoption is or is not then the more responsible choice. Peter Debruge in VARIETY says the "widened focus" makes YOUNG MOTHERS the Dardennes' "most convincing film yet" and their "best film in more than a decade." We begin to understand how it came effectively to fifth place in the Cannes awards with the Best Screenplay award.
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JAFAR PANAHI WITH THE PALME D'OR: AN AWARD WELL EARNED
MORE ABOUT THE CANNES 78 AWARDS AND AWARD FILMS
Bradshaw comments eloquently on why it's great that Jafar Panahi won the highest award at this year's Cannes for his new film IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT. He is, he says, the most courageous director in the world. He points out the obvious qualifications. He has endured a 20-year ban on filmmaking in Iran and spent six years in prison there, and he has gone on making films, skillfully pointed political ones, through all this, year after year, in protest against the oppressive regime of his country. (Don't miss his son's charming and pointed 2021 debut, HIT THE ROAD, as well.)
In truth his films have not been very enjoyable or very real the past few years, but there's hope that this one will be, as HIT THE ROAD is. Some would vote like the French Letterboxd contributor who said that Joachim Trier's SENTIMENTAL VALUE is "la véritable Palme d'Or dans mon coeur" (the true Palme d'Or in my heart). And if Mendoça Filho's THE SECRET AGENT is as great as Bradshaw says and SIRAT is as great as "brother bro" thinks, they may outstrip Panahi in our hearts as well. Awards are given by the Competition Jury, headed by Juliette Binoche, with only 9 members. They don't quite mesh with the critics better shown by the Jury Grid.
The Oscar Expert YouTube bros Cole and Mason, in a video reunited after Mason's sojourj in Cannes, discuss the films and future awards prospects for the most celebrated or "Palmares"-gifted films of the festival. "Brother bro" showed a photo of Panahi sitting back with his arms folded over his head, plainly luxuriating in the recognition of his courage and his skill. They also go over the top-ranked Cannes films and other ones we haden't heard of yet, such as the French animations ARCO and LITTLE AMÉLIE, which have good prospects. They too put in a plug for HIT THE ROAD. They don't miss much.
Kudos to both Peter Bradshaw, who provides some of the most helpful and accessible Cannes reviews and commentary, and the Oscar Expert's "brother bro," whose videos were lively and acccessible, not to mention thorough and intelligent. I won't forget his lyrical rant early in the morning thrhough the streets of Cannes extolling one of his two personal favorites, JOCHIM TRIER'S SENTIMENTAL VALUE. These two guys did the work and brought the goods day after day.
I also owe this vicarius coverage to the many other excellent critics who were there, especially trade journal heavies like Jordan Mintzer, Lee Marshall, Peter Debruge, Jessica Kiang, David Rooney, Guy Lodge, and the other veterans who amaze with their fortitude as well as clarity in covering the festival. They are the best because they provide daily coverage and thus make this most important cinematic event of the year come to life as it happens. I hope readers of this thread will follow some of the links I've provided all along, because they do build a sense of what it feels like to watch these films - and to experience the thrill and excitement of Cannes.
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JOSH O'CONNOR IN THE MASTERMIND
THE MASTERMIND (Kelly Reichardt) - In Competition
Josh O'Connor plays something like his role in Rohrwacher's LA CHIMERA only more incompetent by far: an uncmployed carpenter in Nixon-era Massachusetts who imagines he can become a successful art thief, and steal four Arthur Doves from a local art gallery using some very unreliable hired toughs. This goes awry and so does his life. Bradshaw gives it four out of five stars, loving its low-keyed ironies. The Metascore is a modest 73%, but there are enthusiastic reviews from Jessica Kiang in VARIETY and David Rooney in HOLLLYWOOD REPORTER. Kiang calls it "gorgeously rumpled," and Rooney cals it "an understated, funny-sad heist movie like no other." It sounds like some may have trouble tuning into the departure from genre tradition, but Bradshaw loves "the super-naturalistic depiction of an art gallery robbery" that has "no dramatic music on the soundtrack (quite as it would be in real life)" so that Reichardt "has unerringly located the unglamour in the heist." This sounds iike something really special, very much suited to the rumpled, disreputable side of Josh O'Connor we saw also in Guadagnino's CHALLENGERS, honed into "hangdog near-charm" here. We like this kind of role because our own dreams often seem futile and we want to forgive that. O'Connor has gone a long way from playing Prince Charles. In fact Alison Willmore in VULTURE suggests this is the culmination of a series of roles O'Connor has been playing. Alana Haim, Bill Camp and Hope Davis are also featured. David Rooney says, "Leave it to Kelly Reichardt to make a '70s movie that looks and feels like a lost '70s movie, from its scruffy visual aesthetic to its muted colors, its patient character observation and unhurried pacing to its unstinting investment in an underdog protagonist..." This premiered near the end of the Cannes festival. An American gem to watch for.
