‘Let us join forces’

Iranian dissident filmmaker Jafar Panahi won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for his revenge thriller It Was Just an Accident, handing the festival’s top prize to a director who had been banned from leaving Iran for more than 15 years.

Cate Blanchett on Saturday presented the award to Panahi, who three years ago was imprisoned in Iran before going on a hunger strike. For a decade and a half, he has made films clandestinely in his native country, including one film (This Is Not a Film) made in his living room, and another (Taxi) set in a car.

The crowd rose in a thunderous standing ovation for the filmmaker, who immediately threw up his arms and leaned back in his seat in disbelief before applauding his collaborators and the audience around him. Panahi said what mattered most was freedom in his country. “Let us join forces,” said Panahi. “No one should dare tell us what kind of clothes we should wear, what we should do or what we should not do. The cinema is a society. Nobody is entitled to tell what we should or refrain from doing.”

The Grand Prix, or second prize, was awarded to Joachim Trier’s Norwegian family drama Sentimental Value, his lauded follow-up to The Worst Person in the World.

“We live in a time of tremendous excess and saturation of images. Moving images are being thrown at us all the time,” said Trier. “And I want to give homage to the Cannes Film Festival for being a place where the big cinematic image, which is the foundation of the moving image, the free image, the image that we take time to look at, the image where we can identify with each other in contemplation and empathy, to be cherished in this place in such a way is very important in this moment.”

Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Brazilian political thriller The Secret Agent won two big awards: best director for Filho and best actor for Wagner Moura. The jury prize was split between two films— Oliver Laxe’s desert road trip Sirat and Mascha Schilinski’s Sound of Falling. The Best actress went to Nadia Melliti for The Little Sister, Hafsia Herzi’s French coming-of-age drama.

The Belgian brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne won best screenplay for their latest drama, Young Mothers. The festival’s award for best first film, the Camera d’Or, went to Hasan Hadi for The President’s Cake. — AP

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