Panahi is a famously persistent international filmmaker, having frequently defied the Iranian government to continue making his movies. (In 2011, after being being arrested and banned from filmmaking, he sent This Is Not A Movie to Cannes on a flash drive.) His new film focuses on a crew of vigilantes who capture a man they think persecuted them while they were arrested by the state—but since they were all blindfolded at the time, no one can be completely sure of their captive’s identity. (The film has already been snapped up by NEON for a U.S. release.) Jury president Juliette Binoche spoke about the decision to honor the movie, saying, “The film springs from a feeling of resistance, survival, which is absolutely necessary today.”
Meanwhile, the Grand Prix—which roughly lines up with second place—went to Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, which stars Renate Reinsve as the daughter of an acclaimed director (Stellan Skarsgård) who tries to reconnect with her by casting her in his latest film. And the Jury Prize—plebes call it “third place”—was actually a split, going to both the post-apocalyptic rave pic Sirat and far more sober German film Sound Of Falling. Acting awards went to Nadia Melliti for her role in French/German drama The Little Sister, while Wagner Moura won for The Secret Agent. The latter film (about a teacher living in Brazil during the military dictatorship of the 1960s and ’70s) also scored a Best Director award for Kleber Mendonça Filho. Best screenplay went to the Dardenne brothers, Luc and Jean-Pierre, for Young Mothers, about young women living under the care of a maternal assistance home in Liège. And the Cannes jury whipped up a special award for Chinese director Bi Gan, for his new film Resurrection.
There are plenty of other, less prestigious awards that get handed out at Cannes. (You can see the full list here.) But we’d be remiss if we didn’t check in on at least one: This year’s Palm Dog, acknowledging the year’s best dog in a Cannes movie, went to Panda, an Icelandic sheepdog in Hlynur Palmason’s out-of-competition The Love That Remains. (Panda wasn’t on-hand to accept the award, but did send in an acceptance video; we feel comfortable suggesting she is probably a very good girl.)
