The Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival goes to the film “Triangle of Sadness” by Swedish director Ruben Östlund. This was announced by the jury on Saturday evening. The satire prevailed against 20 other competition entries. A jury chaired by French actor Vincent Lindon made the decision.
“Triangle of Sadness” is a satire on the world of influencers and the super-rich. It tells of a pretty, young and rich couple. Yaya (Charlbi Dean) is an influencer, Carl (Harris Dickinson) is a model. Major parts of the action take place on a luxury yacht. After being hijacked by pirates, some of the ship’s travelers are stranded on an island where hierarchies are reversed.
The core scene of the film, however, is the captain’s dinner on board the yacht – a big oyster feast that takes place during a violent storm and makes everyone sick. Östlund escalates the indigestion into an orgy of vomiting. The guests at the premiere in Cannes initially reacted with disbelief or even piqued. Only when everything escalated into the grotesque did one recognize the great art of slapstick. Östlund had already won the Palme d’Or in 2017, back then for his art market satire “The Square”.
Here the stomachs don’t rebel yet: Charlbi Dean and Harris Dickinson in “Triangle of Sadness”.
(Photo: Festival de Cannes)
The Grand Jury Prize, the second most important award at the festival, went to French filmmaker Claire Denis (“Stars at Noon”) and Belgian Lukas Dhont for “Close” this year. The award for best director went to Park Chan-wook (“Decision to Leave”).
The Iranian actress Zar Amir Ebrahimi had previously been awarded Best Actress for her role in “Holy Spider”. In the film, she plays a journalist on the trail of a serial killer. The Americans Riley Keough and Gina Gammell received the award for their film “War Pony”. Camera d’Or for Best Debut Film. South Korean Song Kang-ho won Best Actor for his role in Hirokazu Koreeda’s “Broker.” The Jury Prize was awarded to “Le Otto Montagne” by Charlotte Vandermeersch and Felix Van Groeningen and equally to “EO” by Jerzy Skolimowski. The Swede Tarik Saleh was honored with the award for the best screenplay for his film “Boy from Heaven”.
The presenter paid tribute to the “true political power” of the films
The Belgian filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne received a special prize. The award was given specifically for this anniversary year. The Dardenne brothers have already been invited to Cannes with many films and won the main prize twice (1999 for “Rosetta” and 2005 for “The Child”). This year her film “Tori and Lokita” was in competition. The work tells of the young migrants Tori and Lokita, who met while fleeing and are now pretending to be siblings in order to enable Lokita (Joely Mbundu) to obtain residence status in Belgium.
The Belgian actress Virginie Efira, moderator of the ceremony, also acknowledged the films of the festival at the beginning of the event. These have “demonstrated the true political power of culture”.