Romanian director Cristian Mungiu won the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or top prize for the second time on Saturday with his Norwegian-set drama that explores clashing cultures, Fjord.
This year’s jury president, South Korean director Park Chan-wook, praised the film for helping shed light on understanding different views “in an artistically magnificent manner”.
Celebrities including Geena Davis, who was featured on this year’s festival poster in a shot from 1991’s Thelma & Louise, as well as Tilda Swinton and Gael Garcia Bernal appeared on stage to introduce the prizes in a ceremony that was largely free of politics and full of praise for cinema.
FJORD TACKLES CONSERVATIVE-PROGRESSIVE DIVIDE
Winning an award at Cannes typically transforms careers and serves as a launch pad for the Oscars, with Palme d’Or winners often carrying strong awards season momentum.
Fjord stars Sebastian Stan, who made his name in the Captain America trilogy, as a Romanian IT specialist who decides to move his family of seven to the Norwegian village where his wife, played by Sentimental Value standout Renate Reinsve, was born.
Cultural differences on child-rearing take an extreme turn when child-protection services become involved, and the divisions reflect a bigger battle between conservative and progressive values.
Mungiu, who joins the small club of directors with two Palme d’Or prizes after winning in 2007 with 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, said his film was a plea for tolerance, inclusion and empathy.
“You need to double-check your beliefs every now and then and make sure that if somebody doesn’t share the same views as you do, it doesn’t mean that he’s right or that you’re right,” he told Reuters after the ceremony.
Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev, who has lived in exile in France since a life-threatening case of COVID-19 during the pandemic, used his speech while accepting the second-place Grand Prix forMinotaur to call on Russian president Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine.
“I simply couldn’t not say it,” he told Reuters, referring to the prominence of Cannes as a platform.
