Dikhyaa Mohanty 
The Cannes film festival ended on July 1, at the south of France with the awarding of its top prize, the Palme d’Or. Jury president Spike Lee jumped the gun by announcing Palme d’Or winner ‘Titane’ before any other award. While Caleb Landry Jones won the best actor award, Norwegian star Renate Reinsve took home the award for best actress. ‘Titane’, French director Julia Ducournau delivered a radical horror story of a young female killer who has sex with cars after surviving a childhood crash.
Director Payal Kapadia’s who is Mumbai-based filmmaker’s first feature bagged the prestigious prize in a formidable field made up of 28 documentaries presented across various sections of the festival. A Night of Knowing Nothing screened as part of the Directors’ Fortnight, a section that runs parallel to the festival.
Kapadia’s film was competing for the award against Todd Haynes’ The Velvet Underground, Andrea Arnold’s Cow, Oliver Stone’s JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass, Marco Bellocchio’s Marx Can Wait, Sergei Loznitsa’s Babi Yar. Context, Mark Cousins’s The Story of Film: A New Generation and Rahul Jain’s Invisible Demons, among others.
Here is a list of the main winners:
Palme d’Or: Julia Ducournau for “Titane” (France)
- Grand Prix: Shared by Ashgar Farhadi for “A Hero” (Iran) and Juho Kuosmanen for “Compartment No.6” (Finland)
- Best director: Leos Carax “Annette” (France)
- Best actress: Renate Reinsve for “Worst Person in the World” (Norway)
- Best actor: Caleb Landry Jones for “Nitram” (US)
- Best screenplay: Hamaguchi Ryusuke and Takamasa Oe for “Drive My Car” (Japan)
- Jury prize: Shared by Nadav Lapid for “Ahed’s Knee” (Israel) and Apichatpong Weerasethakul for “Memoria” (Thailand)
- Best first film: Antoneta Kusijanovic for “Murina” (Croatia)
- Best short film: Hong Kong’s “All The Crows In The World” Tang Yi
