Instead of creating a new thread, I'll post the winner list of the Cannes Film Festival here (Spielberg was president of the jury):
Best Actor: american legendBruce 'the man who killed John Wayne' Dernfor his part in Alexander Payne's road movie Nebraska (borderline senile father and going through life crisis son go on a road trip to Nebraska).
Best Actress:Berenice 'was also in The Artist' Bejofor her part in Le Pass? (The Past), french production written and directed by iranian director Asghar 'A Separation' Farhadi (a women must finalize the divorce with her estranged husband to be able to settle wholly in her new life, but with him come the ghosts of her past). PS: I recommend you watch A Separation, it's a very solid family drama that almost turn into a thriller set in modern day Iran (also check Crimson Gold and Offside for more on Iran in brilliant and easily enjoyable movies).
Best Screenplay:Jia 'major chinese observator' Zhang-Kefor his film A Touch of Sin (four stories of violence in today's China).
Jury's Prize:Like Father, Like Sonthe latest film from Hirokazu 'japanese shapeshifter' Kore-eda (imdb says: a delicate drama about two families who discover their sons were swapped at birth).
Best Director:Amat 'Los Bastardos' Escalantefor Heli (a familly thorn apart by, what else, drug cartels in mexico).
Grand Prix:Inside Llewyn Davisby the Coen brothers (pseudo-biopic set in the folk music scene during the '60s).
Palme d'Or:Blue is the Warmest Color(english title might change as it was a direct translation of what used to be the french title - and the title of the graphic novel that is the basis of the script - current french title is La vie d'Ad?le: chapitre 1 et 2, The Life of Ad?le: Chapter 1 and 2) byAbdellatif 'Games of Love and Chance' Kechiche. Note that the the jury decided to award the price not only to the director, but also the two lead actresses of the movie,L?a 'is in everything' SeydouxandAd?le 'very much unkown' Exarchopoulos. It's a long movie in two chapters following a teenage girl who discovers her homosexuality, struggle with it and then has a relationship with an art student.
For what I have read, the movie is a miracle at just about every level. A production miracle first, because funding the movie was difficult and working with Kechiche is known to be a head splitting nightmare. Not only is he intransigent in his artistic vision (which tends to piss off everyone around him in the production and technical staff), but his movies shape shape themselves over time (so you don't know what will be the movie and when he will be finished). The guy shoots many variations of each scenes, accumulates a ton of material (a tendency made even worse with digital video), and a film materializes (very slowly) in the editing room. A miracle because the film just managed to be finished in time to be shown in the festival. A miracle because the inexperienced actress cast in the part of Ad?le, whom, from her own account, was terrorized by the complexity that Kechiche wanted to put in the character, not feeling up to the difficult task, not feeling experienced enough in life to make believable the life of the character, delivered with the help of Kechiche and Seydoux a striking performance. A miracle finally because Kechiche managed to make a film both sensitive and sensible, mixing coming of age story, eroticism and socio-political discourse in a raw diamond of a movie.
Unlike the Academy Awards or similar ceremonies, it is always difficult to comment on the prices in Cannes only a few movies are released at the same time as the festival and the bulk of them are released in September or October (if at all if you are not in a movie loving major city).
Two of the twenty movies in the competition are currently being shown in nearby theaters (Le Pass? and italian movie La grande bellezza) with a third, Only God Forgives being released soonish....
