Anatomy of a Fall pips The Zone of Interest for Palme d’Or at Cannes
Justine Triet has become only the third female director to win the top award at Cannes with her courtroom examination of a marriage.
Jonathan Glazer’s audacious Auschwitz drama The Zone of Interest, based on a novel by Martin Amis, was the critics’ favourite to win the coveted Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, but the official jury thought otherwise, giving the award for best film to Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall.
At a media conference after the awards, the jury declined to discuss its decision. Jury head and two-time Palme d’Or winner Ruben Ostlund (for The Square, and Triangle of Sadness) says the process was emotional and that the jury deliberately refrained from listening to what critics were saying.
Anatomy of a Fall is a courtroom drama in which a woman is accused of murdering her husband after he falls from a balcony and their young blind son ultimately has his say.
Triet is only the third woman director to win the Palme d’Or, after Julia Ducournau with Titane in 2021 and Jane Campion with The Piano in 1993. Seven women directors were in competition this year, a festival record. Presenting the award, Jane Fonda, who had given a feisty masterclass, said when she first came to Cannes in 1963, no women directors were in the competition. “It never even occurred to us there was something wrong with that,” she said. “We’ve come a long way, but we have a long way to go.”
The Zone of Interest won the second prize at Cannes, the Grand Prix, and also was awarded the top honour by the critics’ group FIPRESCI.
The Jury Prize went to Aki Kaurismaki’s offbeat romance, Fallen Leaves, in which two characters seem permanently depressed in typically deadpan Kaurismaki fashion. The film, which topped Screen’s jury grid and was this writer’s competition favourite, is a must-see at the Sydney Film Festival from June 7.
The biggest applause of Cannes’ awards night was for veteran Japanese star, Koji Yakusho, as he was named best actor for his role as a curious Tokyo toilet cleaner in Wim Wenders’ sweet and tender Perfect Days, which also screens at SFF. The biggest surprise was Turkey’s Merve Dizdar being named best actress for Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s About Dry Grasses. German actor Sandra Huller, the star of both Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest, had been the favourite.
Directing honours went to French-Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung for The Pot-au-Feu, a mouth-watering love story starring Juliette Binoche as the cook to gourmet chef Benoit Magimel in a 19th-century chateau. The screenplay award went to Sakamoto Yuji for Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Monster, another SFF entry about two boys struggling for acceptance. It had already won the Queer Palm.
The festival’s most amusing award, the Palm Dog, was won by border collie Messi from Anatomy of a Fall.