“Anatomy of a Fall” wins Palme d’Or; actors from Japan and Turkey win awards at Cannes

Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall” won the Palme d’Or at the 76th Cannes Film Festival in a ceremony Saturday that handed the festival’s prestigious top prize to a twisty French Alps courtroom drama. 

“Anatomy of a Fall” is only the third film directed by a woman to win the Palme d’Or. It stars Sandra Hüller as a writer trying to prove her innocence in her husband’s death. 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.

Turkish actress Merve Dizdar and Japan’s Koji Yakusho won the best actress and actor awards on Saturday at the 76th edition of the Cannes Film Festival. Tran Anh Hung won best director for “The Pot-au-Feu.”

Turkey’s Merve Dizdar won best actress for “About Dry Grasses”, the latest from festival favorite Nuri Bilge Ceylan.

She said she played “someone who is fighting for her life and she has overcome a lot of difficulties.”

“Under normal circumstances, I would have to work hard on this character in order to understand her but I live in a part of the country which enabled me to fully understand who she is,” she said.

“I understand what it is, being a woman in that area.”

The film focuses on a dejected schoolteacher frustrated with his life in a remote Anatolian village.

Shot in Ceylan’s visually arresting style, it looks at teacher-pupil relations and the roots of political engagement.

Ceylan previously won the Palme d’Or for “Winter Sleep”, among multiple awards he has received over the years at the Cannes Film Festival.

Japan’s Koji Yakusho won best actor at Cannes for “Perfect Days” by German director Wim Wenders, a touching tale about a Tokyo toilet cleaner.

“I want to specifically thank Wim Wenders… who truly created a magnificent character,” he said as he received the award.

The festival, which closed on Saturday evening, sometimes felt like a dream retirement home populated by aging male icons.

There was a glitzy out-of-competition premiere for the new Indiana Jones movie, with an 80-year-old Harrison Ford getting weepy when he received an honorary Palme d’Or.

Martin Scorsese, also 80, premiered his much-anticipated Native American epic “Killers of the Flower Moon” with Robert De Niro, 79.

European auteurs Marco Bellocchio, 83, Wim Wenders, 77, and Victor Erice, 82, all brought new films.

The oldest of all, 86-year-old Ken Loach, showed he still had fighting spirit with the final entry in the competition on Friday, “The Old Oak”, a moving homage to working-class solidarity.

Loach has had no fewer than 15 films in competition at the Cannes Film Festival.