“Shoplifters” Wins Palme d’Or at Cannes

Hirozazu Kore-eda’s “Shoplifters” won the Palme d’Or as the best film of the 71st Cannes Film Festival.

It was the seventh by the Japanese director to screen in Cannes, and the first to win the festival’s top prize.

The story of a close-knit family who live on the edge of homelessness and resort to petty crime to stay alive, the film won near-unanimous raves since it debuted midway through the festival.

Best screenplay prize was jointly awarded to writer-director Jafar Panahi and screenwriter Nader Saeivar for “3 Faces” from Iran and Italian writer-director Alice Rohrwacher for “Happy as Lazzaro” at the closing ceremony on Saturday.

The 2018 Cannes came to an end as this year’s competition jury announced which films won the festival’s biggest prizes, including the Palme d’Or.

Cate Blanchett served as jury president this year, with Kristen Stewart, Denis Villeneuve, Lea Seydoux, and Ava DuVernay all on the jury as well. This year’s competition included 21 films, 10 of which won awards, Indiewire reported.

Since Jafar Panahi was absent at the ceremony, his daughter Solmaz, who has played in “3 Faces,” accepted the award on behalf of her father. After receiving the prize, she read her father’s message in which he thanked the festival director Thierry Frémaux and members of the selection committee as well as president and every member of the jury. He also regretted the absence of his friend, Abbas Kiarostami: “If he’d been here, we’d certainly have watched the ceremony together”.

Kiarostami (1940-2016) is the only Iranian filmmaker to have won the Palme d’Or in 1997 with “Taste of Cherry”. Panahi, 57, started his career in cinema serving as Kiarostami’s assistant. The late auteur also helped Panahi in making some of his own feature films.

In “3 Faces” Behnaz Jafari, a popular Iranian actress, searches for a young girl in northwestern Iran with her friend Jafar Panahi, a director, after seeing a video of the girl asking for help to leave her conservative family.

Panahi, who has won many awards at prestigious festivals, is no stranger to Cannes. In 1995 he won Prix de la Camera d’Or for “The White Baloon,” in 2003 he received the Jury Prize of Un Certain Regard section for “Crimson Gold,” and in 2011, he took Carrosse d’Or for “This Is Not a Film”.

 No Prize for Farhadi

Asghar Farhadi was also competing in Cannes with his Spanish psychological thriller “Everybody Knows” starring Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem.

Despite the positive reviews on the film and especially the performance of the main actors, it did not win any prize.

Farhadi’s third-time presence in Cannes came to an end with no awards, although the two-time Oscar winner has been regarded a favorite at almost every festival in the past few years.

He won the best screenplay award for “The Salesman” at Cannes in 2016 and Shahab Hosseini took the best actor award for the film in the same year.

In 2013 Cannes, Farhadi won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury for “The Past” and Argentine French actress Bérénice Bejo received the best actress award for her role in the same film.

 Other Winners

American filmmaker Spike Lee took the runner-up award, the Grand Prize, for his explosive and barbed film about a black policeman who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan, “BlacKkKlansman.”

Lebanese actress and director Nadine Labaki won the Jury Prize, essentially third place, for “Capharnaum,” a tale of a young boy who sues his parents for bringing him into a hard world, The Wrap reported.

French cinema legend Jean-Luc Godard won a special Palme d’Or for “Image Book,” his experimental essay in sound and image. The first such award in Cannes history, it was given, said jury president Cate Blanchett, for the 87-year-old director’s “continually striving to define and redefine what cinema can be.”

Pawel Pawlikowski won the best director award for “Cold War,” his decade-spanning drama about a troubled romance set in the aftermath of World War II.

Samal Yeslyamova was the recipient of best actress award for her performance in the Russian film “Ayka” as a new mother struggling to support herself and her baby, while Marcello Fonte was named best actor for his performance as a mild-mannered dog groomer swept up in violence in “Dogman.”

“Girl,” a drama about a transgender teen directed by Belgian Lukas Dhont, won the Camera d’Or, which is given to the best debut film from any section of the festival.