Sean Baker wins Palme d’Or at Cannes film festival for ‘Anora’

Sean Baker’s “Anora,” a comic but devastating Brooklyn odyssey about a sex worker who marries the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch, has won the Cannes Film Festival’s top award, the Palme d’Or. The win on Saturday for “Anora” marked a coronation for Baker, the acclaimed indie filmmaker of “The Florida Project.” It’s also, remarkably, the fifth straight Palme d’Or won by specialty distributor Neon, following “Parasite,” “Titane,” “Triangle of Sadness” and last year’s winner, “Anatomy of a Fall.”

Baker, the first American filmmaker to win the Palme since Terrence Mallick in 2012 with “The Tree of Life,” quickly answered that his ambition would remain to “fight to keep cinema alive.” The 53-year-old director said the world needed reminding that “watching a film at home while scrolling through your phone, answering emails and half paying attention is just not the way, although some tech companies would like us to think so.”

 Jacques Audiard, (left) Jury Prize award winner with Karla Sofia Gascon, co-winner of the Best Actress award.

While “Anora” was arguably the most acclaimed film of the festival, its win was a slight surprise. Many expected either the gentle Indian drama “All We Imagine As Light” or the Iranian film “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” to win. Both of those films also took home prizes.

It wasn’t the only jolt of the closing ceremony, though. Before George Lucas was given an honorary Palme d’Or, his old friend and sometimes collaborator Francis Ford Coppol a appeared to present it to him, reuniting two of the most pivotal figures of the last half-century of American moviemaking. Coppola, who earlier in the festival premiered his self-financed sci-fi epic “Megalopolis,” called him his “kid brother.” Lucas called Coppola “a big friend and a brother and a mentor.”

 Nebojsa Slijepcevic. 

“All We Imagine As Light,” about sisterhood in modern Mumbai, won the Grand Prix, Cannes’s  second-highest honour. Payal Kapadia’s second feature was the first Indian in competition in Cannes in 30 years.

Winners at the Cannes Film Festival

Palme d’Or: Sean Baker for Anora

Grand Prix: Payal Kapadia for All We Imagine as Light

Best director: Miguel Gomes for Grand Tour

Best actress: Karla Sofia Gascon, Zoe Saldana, Selena Gomez and Adriana Paz for Emilia Perez

Best actor: Jesse Plemons for Kinds of Kindness

Best screenplay: Coralie Fargeat for The Substance

Special Jury Prize: Mohammad Rasoulof for The Seed of the Sacred Fig

Camera d’Or for best first film: Halfdan Ullmann Tondel for Armand

Best short film: Nebojsa Slijepcevic for The Man who Could Not Remain Silent

Jury Prize: Jacques Audiard for Emilia Perez

The jury awarded a special prize to Mohammad Rasoulof’s “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” a drama made secretly in Iran.  Coralie Fargeat’s body horror film “The Substance,” starring Demi Moore as a Hollywood actress who goes to gory extremes to remain youthful, won for best screenplay.

  Payal Kapadia. 

Some thought Moore, who attended the awards ceremony, might take best actress. But that honour instead went to an ensemble of actors: Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez and Adriana Paz for Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Perez,” a Spanish-language musical about a Mexican drug lord who transitions to a woman. Gascón, who accepted the award, is the first trans actor to win a major prize at Cannes.

Best actor went to Jesse Plemons for Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Kinds of Kindness.”

 Mohammad Rasoulof. 

Portuguese director Miguel Gomes won best director for his “Grand Tour,” an Asian odyssey in which a man flees his fiancée from Rangoon in 1917. The Camera d’Or, the prize for best first feature across all of Cannes official selections, went to Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel for “Armand,” starring “The Worst Person in the World” star Renate Reinsve. Tøndel is the grandson of Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman and Norwegian actor Liv Ullman.

Last year’s top winners in Cannes went on to considerable arthouse success and awards-season runs through the Oscars. That included the Palme winner “Anatomy of a Fall” and the Grand Prix winner “The Zone of Interest.”

The wars in Gaza and Ukraine were sometimes referenced in press conferences and in subtly symbolic ways on the red carpet. Festival workers, seeking better protections, protested during the opening night ceremony. The Olympic flame, ahead of its arrival in Paris for the summer games, stopped by. Honorary Palmes were also given to Meryl Streep and the Japanese anime factory Studio Ghibli.

Agence France-Presse