The Cannes Film Festival has wrapped up for another year, and with it, the usual doling out of fancy trophies with French names that don’t mean “This one is the first place one, that one is good but not quite as good”—but, c’mon, they totally are. This year’s winner of the Big One, the Palme d’Or, for instance, was American filmmaker Sean Baker, whose film makes him the first Stateside movie-maker to win the big prize in nearly a decade. , Baker dedicated the win for his film, which is about an exotic dancer who ends up in a relationship with the son of a Russian oligarch, to “all sex workers, past, present and future.
” The director also stumped for the primacy of the theatrical experience, pointing light jabs at tech companies who might want us to prefer “watching a film at home, while scrolling through your phone and checking emails and half-paying attention.” Meanwhile, the Grand Prix prize (“Second place,” to us uncouth Americans) was distributed to Payal Kapadia’s , the Indian director’s story of two Mumbai nurses who take a metaphor-laden road trip together. Miguel Gomes won the Best Director prize for his new period film , while Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof received a Special Award after braving an 8-year prison sentence to show his film , examining Iran’s Women, Life, Freedom movement, at the festival.
Over in acting, meanwhile, we had one guy winning a trophy for three roles, and three women sharing one; Jesse Plemons won for his.
