Palme d'Or from Cannes Moves To Japan

Cinema fiesta ended last Saturday in Cannes and the winners have already gone home to celebrate their victories and show-off the prizes. Thus it's a high time to reflect on the major awards and start building up a watching list for an upcoming summer nights.

The 71st Festival de Cannes featured 21 films for the major Competition. It is said that the third time makes you lucky, however, it was the fifth that brought the Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda the prestigious Palme d'Or for his Shoplifters. He is the first Japanese to win this prize in 21 years after Shohei Imamura won the Palme d'Or in 1997 for Tne Eel.

Shoplifters depicts a family that, while living on a grandmother’s meager pension, sends their children to steal from stores. One day they find a lost child on the street and bring her home. Kore-eda shows the society in which people struggle to make a living.

The Grand Prix by Jury was awarded to the famous Spike Lee and his satire BlacKkKlansman. The film is based on a true story about a black policeman who infiltrated the Kuk Klux Klan in the 1970s.

The Chairman of the Jury Cate Blanchett said the film’s ending, with footage of the far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last August and President Donald Trump blaming “both sides (for the deadly violence) . . . blew us out of the cinema.”

With majority of Jury members being females this year, many were expecting the Palme d'Or to be awarded to the movie by a female director. However, the female director Nadine Labaki from Lebanon won just a so-called bronze medal (the Jury Prize) for her Capharnaum, depicting a drama of a childhood neglect in Beirut.

A Special Palme d'Or went to a cinematography veteran 87-year old Jean-Luc Godard who participated in the Competition with his collage of sounds and images, The Image Book.

Meanwhile Pawel Pawlikowski from Poland became the Best Director at the Festival de Cannes. His Cold War is a romance that is travelling from the peasant farms of Poland to Paris jazz clubs and back from the 1940s to the 1960s.

Check out the entire list of awards and winners.

Thus 12 days of Festival are over but the journey of Festival films is just yet to start. After all, it's a big audience that will make a final judgement.