Falling palm trees and a faltering Palme d'Or director: how Cannes 2025 went – and who will win
Cannes this year had a lot to live up to after last year's award-winners, headline-grabbers and social media meltdowners Anora, The Substance and Emilia Pérez. It makes reading the signs now that bit more difficult: the bizarre event on the Croisette boulevard this year was a palm tree falling over. If it happened in a film, the metaphor would be unbearable.
Whether 2025's Cannes movies are going to spark a new burst of overwhelming excitement remains to be seen, though this year's vintage feels good – often excellent, although even the biggest names can get it wrong: former Palme d'Or winner Julia Ducournau presented an incoherent drama called Alpha.
This was a Cannes competition whose great movies were about political cruelty and tyranny. Jafar Panahi's A Simple Accident was about a fortuitous event that unearthed horrifying memories in Iran. Kleber Mendonça Filho's glorious, sprawling, Elmore Leonard-esque film from Brazil, The Secret Agent was about the 1970s dictatorship – interestingly, both films showed petty officials taking bribes. Filho's wretched cops are bought off with some cigarettes – Panahi's crooked security guards carry a debit card reader so they can take contactless payments. But for sheer existential grandeur of evil nothing could touch Sergei Loznitsa's Two Prosecutors – about the Stalin 30s, with its Dostoyevskian and Kafkaesque moments of despair.
And to go with these views of the patriarchy, there were daddy issues. Joachim Trier's Sentimental Value showed Stellan Skarsgård being insufferable with his daughters – the preening Egyptian movie star played by Fares Fares in Eagles of the Republic infuriates his son, and Josh O'Connor's hapless art thief in Kelly Reichardt's The Mastermind is a very neglectful dad. And in the Dardenne brothers' compassionate and poignant movie Jeunes Mères, about a care facility for teenage mothers, the fathers were conspicuous by their absence.
So here are my prize predictions, followed by my extra Cannes Braddies, my personal awards in other sections which should exist, but don't.Palme d'Or The Secret Agent (dir Kleber Mendonça Filho)Grand Prix Two Prosecutors (dir Sergei Loznitsa)Jury prize A Simple Accident (dir Jafar Panahi)Best director Carla Simón for RomeríaBest screenplay Mascha Schilinski for Sound of FallingBest actor Josh O'Connor for The MastermindBest actress Yui Suzuki for Renoir (dir Chie Hayakawa)Braddies for prize categories that don't exist but shouldBest supporting actor Stellan Skarsgård in Sentimental Value (dir Joachim Trier)Best supporting actress Tânia Maria for The Secret Agent (dir Kleber Mendonça Filho)Cinematography David Chambille for Nouvelle Vague (dir Richard Linklater)Production design Roger Rosenberg for Eagles of the Republic (dir Tarik Saleh)
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
42 minutes ago
- BBC News
Bruce Springsteen fan on when he told singer to do Liverpool gig
A Bruce Springsteen superfan who told the music legend he should play in Liverpool says he is looking forward to the star's first performances in the city this Beard, 72, says he has spent "many, many, many thousands of pounds" travelling the world to watch the singer perform at about 75 gigs since meeting the star at a US book-signing in 2016, he urged him to consider playing in his home city of Liverpool. He also encouraged Springsteen's E Street Band guitarist Stevie Van Zandt at two meetings, with the latter having since performed at the city's Cavern Beard has now booked tickets for both of Springsteen's concerts at Anfield stadium on Wednesday and Saturday. Mr Beard says he became "hooked" on the star's rock music, after first hearing it in 1976. He said he found the music "resonates" because of "the story in the songs - his truthfulness, the power, the rock and roll".Along with his wife Eileen, he watched all of Springsteen's three gigs in Manchester last that's on top of about 30 concerts across North America – including in Nashville and Memphis – plus many more in Beard says he has been a big music fan since the age of 10, when he would listen to the BBC radio show Pick of the Pops with his admired The Beatles and US singer Roy Orbison but admits to initially being "turned off by the hype" around New Jersey singer-songwriter Springsteen, who first released an album in a friend encouraged him to listen to the songs Born to Run and Thunder Road in 1976, and Mr Beard recalls he "bought all three albums the next day". Mr Beard first saw Springsteen perform at Wembley in 1981 and has since travelled with his wife to watch his concerts in the US, Canada and says that, although Eileen was a music fan when they married in 1978, "she wasn't that bothered" about the singer until seeing him perform the song Point Blank at a gig and it was "like a light went on"."She became as much a fan as me."The couple, who live in Formby, retired from their civil service careers 10 years ago and do not have children, so instead they have used some of their disposable income on travelling and Beard says he "wouldn't like to have a guess" at how much they have spent, adding: "It'd probably be frightening… to some people it'll be incomprehensible."But the concerts became a comfort after he suffered symptoms due to a form of blood cancer called multiple myeloma, which Springsteen's wife and bandmate Patti Scialfa was also diagnosed with in 2018. Following chemotherapy treatment, a nurse recommended the couple to travel and coincidentally Springsteen soon announced some gigs after the lockdowns of the coronavirus booked a trip to see him in the US, which Mr Beard, who is in remission, said was "such a fantastic thing to do and really helped us mentally"."The fact that when you go see him, you're just lost - time stands still," he says."It's just incredible the amount of work he's put into his shows."He says the couple's passion for music makes them "feel young"."We're just enthusiastic about music and getting ourselves the moment." Listen to the best of BBC Radio Merseyside on Sounds and follow BBC Merseyside on Facebook, X, and Instagram and watch BBC North West Tonight on BBC iPlayer. You can also send story ideas via Whatsapp to 0808 100 2230.
Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
Dior picks Jonathan Anderson as creative director, FT reports
June 2 (Reuters) - Northern Irish designer Jonathan Anderson has been named creative director of women's, men's and haute couture collections of Dior, replacing Maria Grazia Chiuri who held the role for almost a decade, the Financial Times reported on Monday. Reuters could not immediately confirm the report. Chiuri left her job as creative director of Dior women's collections, the luxury fashion brand owned by LVMH ( opens new tab said on May, with Dior menswear designer Anderson widely tipped to take a bigger role.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
From Labour on winter fuel payments to a tractor encounter: Edith Pritchett's week in Venn diagrams
From Labour on winter fuel payments to a tractor encounter: Edith Pritchett's week in Venn diagrams – cartoon
