The Grand Prix du Jury, Best Actor and Best Actress awards were all up for grabs at the 76th edition of the Cannes Film Festival.
ADVERTISEMENTThere's more to Cannes than the Palme d'Or, and the jury has also rewarded some of the most important films of this 2023 edition.
The Grand Prix du Jury went to Jonathan Glazer's The Zone of Interest, a chilling film that plunges us into the daily life of the family of the camp leader at Auschwitz. It is a gripping experience for the viewer.
"I wanted to put it [out] now. I had no interest in making a film about this where we could leave the cinema safely and think that happened a long time ago, that it's nothing to do with us anymore. Because that's not the case," Johnathan Glazer told Euronews.
"I wanted to somehow match and recreate that, and then find a way of filming it, with a 21st-century lens really," he added.
The film is an adaptation of the book of the same name by Martin Amis, who died on the day of the film's premiere in Cannes. This very contemporary film is set to be released throughout Europe this year.
Kōji Yakusho takes Best Actor
Wim Wenders' film Perfect Days won the Best Actor prize for Kōji Yakusho, who plays a public toilet cleaner in Tokyo who finds beauty in the everyday world around him.
Kôji Yakusho is one of the great living Japanese actors and a Kiyoshi Kurosawa loyalist who also played in Imamura's The Eel, which won the Palme d'Or in 1997. His collaboration with Wim Wenders was... well, perfect.
"Wim Wenders is German, but he understands Japan so well that I have the impression he was Japanese in a previous life," said Kôji Yakusho.
"He's someone who has a deep understanding of Japanese culture, and when you look at his choice of music, the blend of the two cultures is perfect."
Merve Dizdar receives Best Actress award
For the Best Actress prize, it's the Turkish actress Merve Dizdar for her stunning performance in Nuri Bilge Ceylan's About Dried Grasses.
About Dried Grasses is a slow, sweeping film by Turkish master Nuri Bilge Ceylan - Palme d'Or winner in 2014 for Winter Sleep - that takes us to the edge of Anatolia in a region where distractions are few and far between, to follow a teacher whose career is threatened by a sexual abuse charge from a student.
"I'm very moved, and very privileged, if only because I was chosen from among many very famous actresses," Merve Dizdar revealed.
"So I'm surprised and [it's] beyond anything I could have imagined. That's why I wanted to share this award with all the women in my country and around the world, because as long as there are women, there are battles, and as long as there are battles there is hope."
