It Was Just an Accident by Iran’s Jafar Panahi wins Cannes top prize
Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo wins Un Certain Regard
CANNES, France — Revenge thriller It Was Just an Accident by Iranian director Jafar Panahi, who was barred from filmmaking for 15 years by the government in Tehran, won the Palme d’Or top prize on Saturday.
With the award, Mr. Panahi now has the rare honor of winning the top prize at all three major European film festivals, after nabbing Berlin’s Golden Bear for Taxi in 2015 and the Golden Lion at Venice for The Circle in 2000.
The 64-year-old director, who last attended the festival in person in 2003, addressed his prize to all Iranians, saying the most important thing was Iran and the country’s freedom.
“Hoping that we will reach a day when no one will tell us what to wear or not wear, what to do or not do,” he said, in an apparent reference to Iran’s strict Islamic dress code for women.
The death in 2022 of a young Iranian Kurdish woman in the custody of the morality police for allegedly violating hijab rules sparked Iran’s biggest domestic unrest since the 1979 revolution that brought its clerical rulers to power.
Mr. Panahi, who has been imprisoned several times in Iran, plans to return to his country after the festival, he told Reuters.
“Win or not, I was going to go back either way. Don’t be afraid of challenges,” said the director who made films illegally during the 15-year ban that was recently lifted.
Mr. Panahi added that he would never forget his first day at this year’s festival, and getting to watch the film with an audience after all those years: “Every moment was thrilling.”
It Was Just an Accident, which follows a garage owner who rashly kidnaps a one-legged man who looks like the one who tortured him in prison and then has to decide his fate, is only the second Iranian film to win, after Taste of Cherry in 1997.
“Art mobilizes the creative energy of the most precious, most alive part of us. A force that transforms darkness into forgiveness, hope and new life,” said jury president Juliette Binoche when announcing why they chose Mr. Panahi for the award.
Twenty-two films in total were competing for the prize at the 78th Cannes Film Festival, with entries from well-known directors Richard Linklater, Wes Anderson and Ari Aster.
WITHOUT A HITCH
Saturday’s closing ceremony, which officially ends the glamor-filled festival, went off without a hitch after the Cannes area was hit by a power outage for several hours.
Sentimental Value from acclaimed director Joachim Trier received the Grand Prix, the second-highest prize after the Palme d’Or.
The jury prize was split between the intergenerational family drama Sound of Falling from German director Mascha Schilinski and Sirat, about a father and son who head into the Moroccan desert, by French-Spanish director Oliver Laxe.
Brazil’s The Secret Agent was handed two awards, one for best actor for Wagner Moura, as well as best director for Kleber Mendonca Filho.
“I was having champagne,” said Mr. Mendonca Filho after he ran up to the stage again to collect his own award after celebrating the win for Mr. Moura, who was not in attendance.
Newcomer Nadia Melliti took home best actress for The Little Sister, a queer coming-of-age story about the daughter of Algerian immigrants in Paris.
Belgium’s Dardenne brothers, who have the rare honor of already having won two Palme d’Or prizes, took home the award for best screenplay for their film Young Mothers.
UN CERTAIN REGARD
Chilean director Diego Cespedes’ first feature, The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo, won the Cannes Film Festival’s second-tier Un Certain Regard category on Friday evening.
The film set in the early 1980s centers around a queer family in Chile and the onset of the AIDS epidemic.
“This award doesn’t celebrate perfection. It celebrates that fear, that stubbornness to exist just as we are, even when it makes others uncomfortable,” said Mr. Cespedes while accepting the prize.
This year’s Un Certain Regard section, which usually focuses on more art-house fare, was particularly strong, with several promising directorial debuts from actors including Scarlett Johansson, Harris Dickinson, and Kristen Stewart.
Once Upon a Time in Gaza, which follows a low-level drug dealer and his underling in the coastal enclave the year the Islamist group Hamas took over, earned a directing award for Palestinian twin filmmakers Arab and Tarzan Nasser.
To everyone in Gaza, “to every single Palestinian: your lives matter and your voice matters, and soon Palestine will be free,” said Tarzan Nasser, eliciting a standing ovation.
Colombian director Simon Mesa Soto’s dark comedy exploring the art world, A Poet, received the runner-up Jury Prize.
Frank Dillane, who stars in Mr. Dickinson’s well-received debut about a homeless man, Urchin, took home best performance along with Cleo Diara, who stars in Portuguese director Pedro Pinho’s exploration of neo-colonialism, I Only Rest in the Storm.
The screenplay award went to British director Harry Lighton and his Alexander Skarsgård -led kinky romance Pillion. — Reuters
