Cannes Winners: Palme D'Or Goes To Jafar Panahi's ‘It Was Just An Accident'; Grand Prize Is Joachim Trier's ‘Sentimental Value'; ‘The Secret Agent' Scores For Wagner Moura & Kleber Mendonça Filho

Yahoo

24-05-2025

UPDATE: In a triumphant in-person return to the Cannes Film Festival, 22 years after he last attended (though some of his movies have screened in the intervening time), Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi was awarded the Palme d'Or this evening for It Was Just an Accident.
An emotional Panahi, who has spent most of his filmmaking career in the crosshairs of Iran's authoritarian Islamic Republic government — including more than a decade of multiple detentions, prison sentences, house arrests and filmmaking and travel bans — implored from the Lumière stage: 'Let's put all the problems, all the differences aside; the most important thing right now is our country and our country's freedom.'
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To cheers, he continued, 'Let's reach that moment together when no one dares to tell us what we should completely include, what we should say, what we shouldn't do… Cinema is a society. No one has the right to tell us what you should do, what you shouldn't do.'
On a six-year Palme streak, Neon acquired It Was Just an Accident earlier this week, and also has Grand Prize winner Sentimental Value from Joachim Trier who dedicated his win to his grandfather.
Brazil also had a great night with prizes for Wagner Moura as Best Actor in Kleber Mendonça Filho' The Secret Agent, which also scooped Best Director.
PREVIOUS, 9:36am PT: It's the final day here at the Cannes Film Festival with prizes including the Palme d'Or due to be handed out across the next hour (scroll down for the list of laureates as we update live)
Among those to arrive on the red carpet this evening were Sentimental Value star Elle Fanning, Resurrection director Bi Gan and cast, Sirat director Oliver Laxe and Two Prosecutors director Sergei Loznitsa.
This final day got off to quite the bizarre start when, at about 10am local time, a mass power outage affected the region, cutting off electricity and greatly blocking cell service. The festival, however, was well prepared for such an odd scenario, pivoting to an independent power supply to keep the Palais juiced so that all scheduled events and screenings, including this Closing Ceremony, could proceed as planned. In the end, the lights came back on across town at about 3:30pm here — and the city heaved an audible sigh of relief.
Otherwise, the past 10 days have gone down a treat, with the lineup of films being called the strongest in many years. The Competition films were well-reviewed except for an outlier or two, while outside of the Competition, there were such glossy events as the premiere of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning with Tom Cruise bringing the mega-star wattage.
As ever, Deadline timed the ovations inside the Palais, including one that saw the audience erupt with 19 minutes of praise.
Although the length of applause is not always indicative of awards, that movie, Joachim Trier's Sentimental Value, is the one that Deadline's critics are tipping as the likely Palme d'Or winner.
Other movies singled out by our critics include Jafar Panahi's It Was Just an Accident, Richard Linklater's Nouvelle Vague, Bi Gan's Resurrection, Mascha Schilinski's The Sound of Falling and Sergei Loznitza's Two Prosecutors. For all of their picks, see here.
The jury is presided over by Juliette Binoche this year, and while no one really ever knows which way the panel will swing, we'll know more in just a little while. Check back for updates.
WINNERSPalme d'OrIt Was Just an Accident, dir: Jafar PanahiGrand PrizeSentimental Value, dir: Joachim TrierBest ActressNadia Melliti, La Petite DernièreBest DirectorKleber Mendonça Filho, The Secret AgentJury Prize – tieSirat, dir: Oliver LaxeThe Sound of Falling, dir: Mascha SchilinskiBest ScreenplayJean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Young MothersBest ActorWagner Moura, The Secret AgentSpecial PrizeResurrection, dir: Bi GanCamera d'OrThe President's Cake, dir: Hassan HadiSpecial Mention, Camera d'OrMy Father's Shadow, dir: Akinola Davies JrShort Film Palme d'OrI'm Glad You're Dead Now, dir: Tawfeek Barhom
Special Mention, Short FilmAli, dir: Adnan Al Rajeev
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