Anatomy Of The Fall Wins The 76th Palme D'Or

The 76th Festival de Cannes has announced its winners last Saturday but it is still one of the most discussed events this week. Has the Jury, chaired by Swedish director Ruben Östlund, surrounded by Moroccan director Maryam Touzani, French actor Denis Ménochet, British-Zambian screenwriter & director Rungano Nyoni, American actress & director Brie Larson, American actor & director Paul Dano, Afghan author Atiq Rahimi, Argentinian director & screenwriter Damián Szifron and French director Julia Ducournau, come to the right verdict after watching 21 films in Cometition this year?

The Palme d'Or has been awarded to the French female director Justine Triet for her intellectual thriller Anatomy of the Fall (Anatomie d'une Chute), which centers around the woman on trial after a mysterious death of her husband. But it's not just a plain whodunit but rather an exhaustive dissection of relationships between men and women. "The film is based on the idea of living a nightmare. I wondered what would happen if my personal hell suddenly became everybody’s business. I wanted to make another film about the relationship between men and women, this time exploring how a couple falls apart. Telling the tale of a body that collapses, in a technical manner, and spending as much time on this as the disintegration of a relationship. And so I came up with the vision of a little boy who finds out about his parents’ business in a trial that methodically dissects the couple’s history," the director explains her idea of the film.

Justine Triet is the third female director at Cannes to receive the Palme d'Or. In 2021 Julia Ducournau won with her Titane, and the first woman to win the highest prize of the Festival was Jane Campion in 1993 for The Piano.

Meanwhile the Grand Prix of the Festival went to Jonathan Glazer's The Zone of Interest, the film based on the novel of the same title by Martin Amis (who has recently died) pictures the life of the commandant of Auschwitz and his wife who try to build a perfect family surroundings next to the concentration camp. The British filmmaker offers a chilling snapshot of concentration camp realities and a reflection on the boundaries and borders of the human soul.

Fallen Leaves by the Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki won the Jury Prize. This gentle tragicomedy is the fourth part of Aki Kaurismäki’s working-class trilogy (Shadows in Paradise, Ariel, and The Match Factory).

The Best Director prize was handed to Vietnamese-French filmmaker Tran Anh Hung for The Pot-au-Feu, Best Screenplay - to Yuji Sakamoto for Monster. Best Performance by an Actress went to Merve Dizdar for her role as a teacher in About Dry Grasses from the Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan, while Best Actor - to Japanese actor Koji Yakusho for the role of a loner in Wim Wender's Perfect Days.

See all the winners here.

The broader cinema audience will have to wait for a while till the the films - winners hit the cinema theatres, and produce their own verdict in terms of box offices. Because there's the best critic inside of everyone of us.

Source: Festival de Cannes press release, 27.05.2023