Veteran British Director Ken Loach has described his second Palme d’Or win at the Cannes Film Festival, for I, Daniel Blake, as “a message of hope”. “We must say that another world is possible and necessary”.
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Loach was asked if filmmaking is all about being faithful to the same societal issues, and he said: “I suppose what we’ve tried to do is to make the drama of everyday life the subject of the films but that encompasses a huge spectrum of events and emotions, and things that happen”.
As for Loach’s celebrations, it’s unlikely the I, Daniel Blake team descended on Cannes’ high-end bars and clubs with their prize.in 2006, the filmmaker chose to reward himself after the closing ceremony with a cup of tea. And Andrea Arnold received the Jury Prize for “American Honey”.
This time, the award was all his own.
“I called it the nine-headed beast”, said Cannes Film Festival jury president George Miller about how hard the group sorted over winners during the last 10 days, “It was a collective experience, a hard one over many hours”.
United States trade magazine Variety called it one of Loach s finest films, “a drama of tender devastation… and scalding and moving relevance”.
The Grand Prix, which is akin to a runners-up trophy, went to Quebecois director Xavier Dolan’s “It’s Only the End of a World”, a film based on a play about a dysfunctional family but shot through with remarkably effective cinematic devices and outstanding acting by the ensemble cast.
While carrying out research for the movie, the filmmakers interviewed people working for welfare centres, who said they were given a quota of how many sanctions to hand out. “So that’s how I feel, right here, right now”.
Farhadi, whose 2011 s “A Separation” won the best foreign language film Oscar, also scooped the screenplay honours. The jury praised Dolan for “filming in a transcendental way”. The movie received awful reviews when it opened and most expected it to walk away empty handed. But Ade and her film were shut out of the winner’s circle. He told a press conference he was “quietly stunned” to have won the award with “the same little gang”, reports the BBC. He previously starred in A Separation, also directed by Farhadi.
“We judged each film on its merits…it really didn’t come up”, he said. Jaclyn Jose won Best Actress for the Filipino drama Ma’ Rosa, and Andrea Arnold won the Jury Prize for her new film American Honey.
Canadian director and screenwriter Xavier Dolan, who served as a jury member of the 68th Cannes Film Festival, won the Grand Prize of this year’s festival with his film Juste La Fin Du Monde (It’s only the end of the world).
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“I think the critics were wrong”, Sutherland said. “But there were a lot of great performances by women”.
