Cannes Film Festival: The Square wins Palme d'Or
Art world satire The Square, directed by Ruben Ostlund, has won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
The
Swedish title was one of 19 films competing for the prestigious Palme
d'Or, in the 70th year of the festival on the French Riviera.
Prizes also went to British filmmaker Lynne Ramsay and director Sofia Coppola.
But juror Jessica Chastain said she was shocked at the way many of the films she saw at Cannes portrayed women.
Chastain, star of The Help said it was "disturbing" to see the way
women were depicted on screen, saying: "The one thing I really took away
from this experience was how the world views women. There are some
exceptions, but for the most part I was surprised with the
representation of female characters on the screen in these films.
"I
hope when we include more female story-tellers we will have more of the
women that I recognise in my day-to-day life, ones that are proactive,
have their own agency and don't just react to the men around them - they
have their own point of view."
Toni Erdmann director Maren Ade,
who also sat on the jury, agreed more female directors were needed,
adding: "We're missing a lot of stories they might tell."
Cannes: The winners
Palme d'Or: The Square
Grand Prix: BPM (Beats per Minute)
Jury prize: Andrey Zvyagintsev, Loveless
70th anniversary award: Nicole Kidman
Best director: Sofia Coppola, The Beguiled
Best actress: Diane Kruger, In the Fade
Best actor: Joaquin Phoenix, You Were Never Really Here
Best
screenplay: Joint winners Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthymis Filippou for
The Killing of a Sacred Deer,
and Lynne Ramsay for You Were Never Really
Here
Camera d'Or (best debut film): Leonor Serraille, Jeune Femme
Short film prize: A Gentle Night, Qiu Yang
Spanish director Pedro Almodovar, who chaired the jury, said the
winning film was a rich and "completely contemporary" tale about "the
dictatorship of being politically correct".
The director of
Julieta and All About My Mother said the festival was "the birth of a
lot of wonderful movies" and that he had been "completely mesmerised" by
some of the films in competition.
But he appeared emotional when discussing how much he had loved Grand
Prix winner BPM, which tells the story of activist group Act Up and the
lack of government support for Aids sufferers in the 1990s.
"They are real heroes who saved many lives," he said, his voice breaking.
BPM
had been a favourite to win the Palme d'Or, alongside bleak Russian
family drama Loveless and heist thriller Good Time, with The Square an
outsider.
Jury members also included Men in Black star Will
Smith, South Korean director Park Chan-wook, Chinese star Fan Bingbing,
Italian director Paolo Sorrentino, French actress and writer Agnes Jaoui
and composer Gabriel Yared.
British filmmaker Lynne Ramsay was the joint winner of best
screenplay for You Were Never Really Here, for which Joaquin Phoenix was
named best actor. It tells the story of a private contractor sent to
rescue a young girl from a paedophile ring, and Ramsay said it had been a
"labour of love", and that "to be recognised for the writing is great".
The best director award went to Sofia Coppola for The Beguiled, a
drama about an injured soldier taken in by a girls' boarding school
during the American Civil War - only the second time the prize has gone
to a woman.
It stars Nicole Kidman as the headmistress and the
Australian actress was given a 70th anniversary award to mark the fact
she had three films and one TV series shown at this year's festival.
The Square stars Claes Bang with British actor Dominic West and Mad
Men's Elisabeth Moss in supporting roles. While it received good
reviews, it was not tipped to win the main prize.
After winning,
Ostlund said: "I think my first reaction was 'oh my God, how fantastic'.
I mean I hugged the main actor that I've been working with almost for
two years now. We have been struggling together and it was a very, very
happy ending of that work of course."
The Square focuses on Bang's character Christian as the gallery he
runs prepares for a new exhibition in the gallery's courtyard in which
members of the public can stand and ask for help. Meanwhile, his private
life starts to unravel after he is mugged and seeks the return of his
belongings in an unorthodox way.
It received four stars from the Daily Telegraph's Robbie Collin, who said that while it is a "slow burn", it has a "cumulative force that can't be resisted", while Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian gave it the same score, calling it "thrillingly weird".
The
Swedish director was previously best known for Force Majeure, about a
family ski trip rocked by a father's selfish reaction to an avalanche.
BBC
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