Spike Lee and Jean-Luc Godard were also among the prizewinners at the 71st annual film festival
In a surprise verdict, the Japanese film Shoplifters, directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda, has been awarded the Palme d’Or for main feature at the close of the Cannes film festival. “The ending blew us out of the cinema,” said jury president Cate Blanchett.
Beating a field of 21, including two or three titles that had been hotly tipped for the top by the critics, the film took the prestigious prize on Saturday night ahead of the screening of the final film of the festival, Terry Gilliam’s long-awaited adaptation of Cervantes, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote .
A special Palme d’Or award was made to the 87-year-old French Swiss film director Jean Luc Godard for his film Image Book. Godard’s film, Blanchett explained, “almost sat apart from the other films, almost outside time and space,” and so could not be considered against them.
Spike Lee’s anti-Trump comedy BlacKkKlansman was made runner-up, receiving the Grand Prix, with the third prize going to a film by a Lebanese woman director, Nadine Labaki, that had been rewarded with an ecstatic ovation towards the end of the 10-day annual festival on the Côte d’Azur. Capernaum, Labaki’s heart-wrenching attack on the needless suffering of children, was the favourite of Oscar-winner Gary Oldman, who told the press he was backing the film as he walked the red carpet last night.
Other favourites included Burning, made by Lee Chang-dong, which earned the highest score from critics ever recorded, and one of the earliest films screened at the festival, Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War.
