Titane takes the Palme d’Or at an unusu­al­ly stacked Cannes Film Festival

After 11 long days filled with sun­shine, stars and sali­va tests, the 74^th Cannes Film Fes­ti­val has drawn to a close, bring­ing with it the announce­ment of the annu­al Palme d’Or.

This year’s jury, led by Spike Lee, have been delib­er­at­ing over the mam­moth 18 titles in com­pe­ti­tion since the fes­ti­val kicked off on July 6^th. Joined by Mélanie Lau­rent, Mati Diop. Mag­gie Gyl­len­haal, Jes­si­ca Haus­ner, Song Kang-ho, Kle­ber Men­donça Fil­ho, Tahar Rahim and Mylène Farmer in this high­ly unusu­al year, where no clear front run­ner for the prize emerged despite plen­ty of wor­thy contenders.

The cer­e­mo­ny was a par­tic­u­lar­ly mem­o­rable one give to the trans­la­tion dif­fi­cul­ties between French and Eng­lish; Spike Lee acci­den­tal­ly revealed the win­ner of the Palme before any oth­er awards had been hand­ed out, cre­at­ing a good-natured ele­ment of chaos to pro­ceed­ings, and there was a fur­ther mis­un­der­stand­ing about who would be shar­ing the Grand Prix.

In the end, the grand prize of the Palme d’Or went to Julia Ducournau’s Titane. Her win makes Ducour­nau only the sec­ond woman in the festival’s his­to­ry to win the Palme, and the first to win it out­right after Jane Cam­pi­on shared her prize for The Piano with Chen Kaige for Farewell My Concubine.

Titane is Ducournau’s sec­ond fea­ture film, after Raw screened in Critic’s Week in 2016. Mean­while Apichat­pong Weerasethakul’s Memo­ria and Nadav Lapid’s Ahed’s Knee joint­ly received the Jury Prize, and Asghar Farhadi’s A Hero shared the Grand Prix with Juho Kuosmanen’s Com­part­ment No. 9.

Caleb Landry Jones was the recip­i­ent of Best Actor for his per­for­mance in Justin Kurzel’s Nitram and Renate Reinsve took home Best Actress for Joachim Trier’s The Worst Per­son in the World. The Screen­writ­ing award was received by Ryusuke Ham­aguchi for Dri­ve My Car, and Best Direc­tor went to Leos Carax for Annette.

The Cam­era d’Or for Best First Fea­ture went to Croa­t­ian direc­tor Antone­ta Ala­mat Kusi­janovic for Muri­na, which played in Director’s Fort­night. Ital­ian direc­tor Mar­co Bel­loc­chio was pre­sent­ed with an hon­orary Palme by his coun­try­man Pao­lo Sorrentino.

Despite the unusu­al cir­cum­stances of this year’s fes­ti­val and indeed the clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny, it was a strong com­pe­ti­tion fea­tur­ing new work from fes­ti­val reg­u­lars includ­ing Jacques Audi­ard, Bruno Dumont and Nan­ni Moret­ti. In his speech at the cer­e­mo­ny, Spike Lee spoke affec­tion­ate­ly about his time at the fes­ti­val, refer­ring to Cannes as ​“a sec­ond home”.

Over in the Un Cer­tain Regard sec­tion, the grand prize went to Kira Kovalenk’s Unclench­ing the Fists, while Sebas­t­ian Meise’s Great Free­dom and Valdimar Johannsson’s Lamb were hon­oured with Prix du Jury and Prize for Orig­i­nal­i­ty respec­tive­ly. Haf­sia Herzi’s Bonne mere won the Ensem­ble prize, and La Civ­il won the Prize of Courage.

Cather­ine Corsini’s French dra­ma La Frac­ture walked away with the Queer Palm, and in the Director’s Fort­night side­bar, Italy’s Jonas Carpig­nano was recog­nised for A Chiara. Per­haps most impor­tant­ly of all, Til­da Swin­ton picked up the Palme Dog on Fri­day, which was award­ed to her very own cock­er spaniels for their per­for­mance in The Sou­venir Part II.

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