Cannes: British director Ken Loach won the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or on Sunday for “I, Daniel Blake”, a deeply moving portrait of an ageing Newcastle carpenter all at sea with the UK’s benefits system after a heart attack.
Loach, applauded the world over for his politically-inflected social-realist dramas, became the eighth director to win the festival’s top prize twice. His last win here was in 2006 for “The Wind that Shakes the Barley”.
He is now in the company of Alf Sjoberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Bille August, the Dardenne brothers, Emir Kusturica, Shohei Imamura and Michael Haneke. This was Loach’s 13th appearance in the Cannes Competition.
Receiving the Palme d’Or, the filmmaker said, “The world we live in is at a dangerous point right now. We are in the grip of a dangerous project of austerity driven by ideas that we call neo-liberalism that have brought us to near-catastrophe.”
“When there is despair people from the far right take advantage. We must give a message of hope, we must say another world is possible,” Loach signed off.
The awards night of the 69th Cannes Film Festival was a triumph for British cinema with the other UK title in the Competition, Andrea Arnold’s “American Honey”, winning the Jury Prize.
“American Honey”, Arnold’s first film shot entirely in the US, is an ebullient, lyrical tale of a group of homeless teens selling magazines across the Midwest.
Romania’s Cristian Mungiu, a previous Palme d’Or winner, shared the best director prize with Frenchman Olivier Assayas.While the latter won for “Personal Shopper”, a Kristen Stewart-starrer that divided critics here, Mungiu bagged his prize for “Bacaluareat” (‘Graduation’).
“Bacaluareat” is a masterful probe into petty corruption fuelled by a respected and well-meaning doctor’s desire to see his daughter secure admission in a British university so that she can escape the lack of opportunities in the Romanian town they live in.
“Personal Shopper” is a postmodern ghost story that blends a young woman’s sense of loss at the death of her twin brother with evocative, if occasionally baffling, mystical elements.
The Grand Prix, which is akin to a runners-up trophy, went to Quebecois director Xavier Dolan’s “It’s Only the End of a World”, a film based on a play about a dysfunctional family but shot through with remarkably effective cinematic devices and outstanding acting by the ensemble cast.
“Forushande” (‘The Salesman’), Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s new drama, picked up two prizes – one for screenplay, the other for its lead actor, Shahab Hosseini. The best actress prize was won by Jaclyn Jose for her powerhouse role in the Filipino film “Ma’ Rosa”, directed by Brillante Mendoza.
The Camera d’Or for the best first-time director in the official selection of the festival went to Houda Benyamina for her Franco-Moroccan coming-of-age feminist drama “Divines”. Benyamina did not hide her excitement and delivered a long and impassioned acceptance speech that called for greater freedom for women in the movie industry and in the world at large.
“I always kept saying I do not care about Cannes… but today I am, well, Happy to be here. Cannes belongs to us too. It’s a killer,” she said.
“For things to change, you have to put a lot more women in decision-making positions. Women, women, women…” she added.
Jim Jarmusch’s “Paterson”, among the best reviewed films on the Croisette this year, was surprisingly shut out of the awards.
