Cannes 2016: all the awards, and reaction
Ken Loach wins his second Palme d’Or, Andrea Arnold wins her third Jury Prize and Iran's Asghar Farhadi wins two awards for best actor and screenplay – but Maren Ade’s widely admired Toni Erdmann leaves empty-handed. Do juries shun comedies? Do actors always lean to theatre stories, wonders Nick James?
What UK newspaper arts editors have wanted for years to happen in Cannes finally did. It was ‘a great night for the Brits’, with Ken Loach picking up his second Palme d’Or for I, Daniel Blake, his deeply moving indictment of the destruction of the welfare state, and Andrea Arnold winning her third Jury Prize for American Honey, her evocative, energised road movie following youth out to find themselves in the USA.
- Read our review of I, Daniel Blake
- Read our review of American Honey
But it was also a great night for theatre-based films and it could be that the tendency in major festivals to have the majority of jurors be actors may have tipped it in favour of giving the Grand Prix to Xavier Dolan’s OTT stage adaptation It’s Only the End of the World and both the Best Screenplay and Best Actor prizes to Asghar Farhadi’s The Salesman, which combines real-life drama with Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman. I say that not to take any glory away from Farhadi’s winners. I don’t think the film works but the screenplay and acting were good.
I am more puzzled by Dolan’s win, though, since the film is histrionic to the nth degree. But it can be difficult for a jury to come to agreement, and sometimes the best films lose out because of strong objections from just one or two jurors. I guessed Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann wouldn’t win the Palme d’Or because comedies don’t, but I’m surprised by the total shutout. Having said that, Toni Erdmann is all about surprises, so we’ll put this down to another one.
- Read our review of Toni Erdmann
I’m pleased for Cristian Mungiu and Olivier Assayas, who had to split the Best Director prize (respectively for Graduation and Personal Shopper), and I don’t mind Jaclyn Jose winning the Best Actress prize (for her role in Brillante Mendoza’s Ma’ Rosa) because the field was so tight. Cristi Puiu’s Sieranevada is not the kind of film that wins prizes and the Dardennes have enough on the shelf without getting another. Others elsewhere will complain that this set of awards are some kind of catastrophe, but I leave that to them.
- Read our review of Graduation
- Read our review of Personal Shopper