“I, Daniel Blake”, the veteran left-wing filmmaker’s damning indictment of the poverty and humiliation inflicted on the most vulnerable by welfare cuts in Britain, moved many critics to tears.
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The 79-year-old director, who has entered the competition 13 times in the past, told the audience at Sunday night’s awards ceremony that film makers “must give a message of hope, we must say another world is possible”.
The event’s second biggest prize, the Grand Prix, went to Xavier Dolan’s “It’s Only the End of the World”, a melodrama given some of the worst reviews at this year’s festival. More analysis to come, with a full list of winners below.
British director Ken Loach celebrates after being awarded with the Palme d’Or for the film “I, Daniel Blake” during the closing ceremony of the 69th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France, on Sunday.
He said the work we do, the places we are born, the class we are born into all determine who we become, the relationships we have, and the choices we make.
It is the second time that Loach has won the Palme d’Or.
Gimenez dedicated the award to his team, his family, and Luis Bunuel, the only Spaniard who has previously taken home a Palme d’Or, which he won back in 1961 for his film “Viridiana”.
Other winners included “American Honey” by Andrea Arnold, which won the Jury Prize, and Jaclyn Jose, who was named Best Actress for her role in corruption drama “Ma” Rosa’.
The 2016 Cannes Film Festival jury is headed by “Mad Max” director George Miller, and also includes actors Donald Sutherland and Mads Mikkelsen, actresses Kirsten Dunst, Valeria Golino and Vanessa Paradis, directors Laszlo Nemes and Arnaud Desplechin and producer Katayoon Shahabi. Farhadi, whose 2011′s “A Separation” won the best foreign language film Oscar, also scooped the screenplay honors.
Blake befriends a young single mother of two who is sanctioned for being late at a benefits centre, leaving her with no money for food.
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“It’s about something so much larger than bureaucratic cruelty (although it is very much about that)”.
