Anatomy of a Fall wins Cannes Palme d’Or, capping strong festival for women | CBC News

Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall won the Palme d’Or at the 76th Cannes Film Festival in a ceremony Saturday that bestowed the festival’s prestigious top prize on an engrossing, rigorously plotted French courtroom drama that puts a marriage on trial. 

Anatomy of a Fall, which stars Sandra Hüller as a writer trying to prove her innocence in her husband’s death, is only the third film directed by a woman to win the Palme d’Or. One of the two previous winners, Julia Ducournau, was on this year’s jury. 

Cannes’ Grand Prix, its second prize, went to Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest, a chilling Martin Amis adaptation about a German family living next door to Auschwitz. Hüller also stars in that film. 

The awards were decided by a jury presided over by two-time Palme winner Ruben Östlund, the Swedish director who won the prize last year for Triangle of Sadness. The ceremony preceded the festival’s closing night film, the Pixar animation Elemental.

4th straight Palme win for indie distributor Neon

Remarkably, the award for Anatomy of a Fall gives the indie distributor Neon its fourth straight Palme winners. Neon, which acquired the film after its premiere in Cannes, also backed Triangle of Sadness, Ducournau’s Titane and Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite, which it steered to a best picture win at the Academy Awards.

Triet was presented the Palme by Jane Fonda, who recalled coming to Cannes in 1963 when, she said, there were no female filmmakers competing “and it never even occurred to us that there was something wrong with that.” This year, a record seven out of the 21 films in competition at Cannes were directed by women. 

After a rousing standing ovation, Triet, the 44-year-old French filmmaker, spoke passionately about the protests that have roiled France this year over reforms to pension plans and the retirement age. Several protests were held during Cannes this year, but demonstrations were — as they have been in many high-profile locations throughout France — banned from the area around the Palais des Festivals. Protesters were largely relegated to the outskirts of Cannes. 

“The protests were denied and repressed in a shocking way,” said Triet, who linked that governmental influence to that in cinema. “The merchandizing of culture, defended by a liberal government, is breaking the French cultural exception.” 

“This award is dedicated to all the young women directors and all the young male directors and all those who cannot manage to shoot films today,” she added. “We must give them the space I occupied 15 years ago in a less hostile world where it was still possible to make mistakes and start again.” 

After the ceremony, Triet reflected on being the third female director to win the Palme, following Ducournau and Jane Campion (The Piano). 

“Things are truly changing,” she said.