“Fjord,” Cristian Mungiu’s drama about a Romanian family directed by children in Norway, won the Palme d’Or at the 79th Cannes Film Festival. It was the second Palme for Mungiu, who took the prize in 2007 “for 4 months, 3 weeks, and 2 days.”
The president of the jury, Park Chan-wook, said he spent the past two weeks discussing “films of different people and judges with different personalities,” and that “this split” brought him joy. “Fjord,” he said, shed light on the issue of “honoring the diversity of the world in a magnificent artistic way.”
Accepting the award, Mungiu referred to his past wins and his time working on the Cannes jury under Steven Spielberg in 2013. “All awards are conditional, and the fact that you gave me this award, is exciting for us,” he said. “We feel very happy. But we need to wait 10, 20 years to watch these films again, then we will understand which of them were really good and managed to survive the test of time.”
He added: “Today, society is divided—divided, different. He referred to “tolerance, inclusion and compassion”: “These are lovely words, and we are used to lovely words,” he said, “but we need to use them more often.”
In the United States, “Fjord” will be the seventh consecutive winner of the Palme d’Or distributed by Neon.
The Grand Prix, or second place, went to “Minotaur,” director Andrei Zvyagintsev’s adaptation of Claude Chabrol’s drama “La Femme Infidèle” (1969) set in Russia near the end of the invasion of Ukraine. (Latvia represented Russian territories.)
The Jury Prize, a third-place prize that usually goes to bold, risky work, went to German director Valeska Grisebach’s “The Dreamed Adventure,” the story of a Bulgarian archaeologist who wanders through his gang-run hometown. Grisebach spoke about filming in the region and praised the compassion and kindness of its residents.
Best Director was a split between the Spanish director team Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi (“Black Ball”) and Pawel Pawlikowski for “Fatherland,” a critics’ favorite for author Thomas Mann’s return to Germany in 1949.
Another critics’ favorite, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “All of a Sudden,” earned a joint best actress award for Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto, who spend much of the film acting in each other’s native language. “Thank you so much for recognizing us as a couple,” Okamoto said. These female players appeared to be heartbroken and it seems that they are still finishing each other’s sentences.
Best Actor was another relationship, between Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne, who in Lukas Dhont’s play “Coward” played soldiers who fell in love while fighting in World War I. It was a festival with many war films: Director Emmanuel Marre won the screenplay award for “A Man of His Time,” featuring his grandfather, Henporty-Marre, as Vip.
The Camera d’Or, for best first feature, went to Marie Clémentine Dusabejambo for “Ben’Imana,” which dramatizes the complexities of social reconciliation in Rwanda.
