The 2018 Cannes Film Festival is over and here are the winners!
The top prize, the Palme d'Or went to Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda's Shoplifters!
This is Kore-eda's seventh time in Cannes. His past films that were shown in Cannes started with Distance in 2001, followed by Nobody Knows in 2004, Air Doll in 2009, the Jury Prize winner Like Father, Like Son in 2013, Our Little Sister in 2015, and After the Storm in 2016. Like most of his past films, Shoplifters is a family drama. The film follows the impoverished Osamu Shibata and his wife Nobuyo as they try to eke out a living for their themselves and their two children through shoplifting. One day, they encounter Yuri, a little homeless girl in the freezing cold. Reluctant at first, Osamu’s wife agrees to adopt the girl after learning her travails and hardships. Despite their poverty, they seem to live happily together until an incident reveals hidden secrets and their bonds are tested.
Good news for those of us living in Singapore. Local distributor Clover Films has announced that they have acquired Shoplifters. The film will screen in the third quarter of this year. Stay tuned!
The second prize, the Grand Prix, went to Spike Lee's BlackkKlansman.
It has been two decades since Lee was at Cannes. The last film at Cannes was Do The Right Thing, which was famously snubbed for the Palme d'Or, which went to Steven Soderbergh's era-defining sex, lies, videotape.
BlackkKlansman, a kind of buddy cop genre piece, follows Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), an African-American police officer from Colorado, and Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) as they successfully infiltrate the local Ku Klux Klan, with Zimmerman almost became the head of the local chapter. The film's ending is one of the most epic and stirring movie ending of all times.
The film is being distributed by United International Pictures in Singapore. A release date has not been announced.
The third prize, the Best Director award, went to Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski.
His previous film, Ida, won the Oscars for Best Foreign Language film. Shot in the same style as Ida, in black and white and in 4:3 aspect ratio, Cold War is a tempestuous love story between pianist Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) and singer-dancer Zula (Joanna Kulig). Set during the age of the Iron Curtain, the film, which is loosely based on the lives of Pawlikowski's unhappily married parents, is a portrait of impossible love.
No news of any release date as of yet, but it will undoubtedly be released either in this year or the next.
3 Faces (dir. Jafar Panahi)
Happy as Lazzaro (dir. Alice Rohrwacher)
The Best Screenplay prize was shared between Italian director Alice Rohrwacher and Iranian director Jafar Panahi.
3 Faces follows actress Behnaz Jafari who decides to abandon her film shoot when she watched a provincial girl’s video plea for help. Her family forbids her from pursuing her studies at the Tehran drama conservatory. Behnaz turns to filmmaker Jafar Panahi to help the young girl. They travel by car to the rural northwest where they have amusing encounters with the villagers of the girl’s mountain village.
Happy as Lazzaro, set in an Italian countryside, follows Lazzaro, a young, seemingly simple-minded peasant, who meets Tancredi, a the son of the tobacco magnate, the Marchesa Alfonsina de Luna. One day, the Marchesa arrives for one of her periodic visits to the village, bringing along Tancredi. Tancredi takes a liking to Lazzaro and befriends him, and later, recruits Lazzaro to help him in his plan to fake his own kidnapping so that he can extort one million lire in ransom from his mother. Shot on Super 16mm film, the film is a magical realist fable about the corruption and decay of modern Italy.
No news yet on the local release both the films, but won't be surprised if the Singapore International Film Festival chooses to screen the films.
The Jury Prize went to Capharnaüm, directed by Lebanese director Nadine Labaki.
This is Labaki's third outing at Cannes after her debut feature Caramel and her sophomore Where Do We Go Now?. Set in the slums of Beirut, Capharnaüm follows the incredible story of 12-year-old Zain who is suing his parents for giving him life. The film is a searing indictment of impoverished plight of children in Beirut's slums while asking the fundamental question: Under certain situations, do parents have the right to give birth?
That's it for the films that have won at Cannes. Which films do you think should have won?