Jacques Audiard’s Dheepan has won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
The refugee drama tells the story of people fleeing post-civil war Sri Lanka for a life in France.
Holocaust drama Son of Saul took the Grand Prix. Vincent Lindon won Best Actor while Rooney Mara and Emmanuelle Bercot shared Best Actress.
Dheepan tells of a former Tamil Tiger fighter who links up with two strangers to pretend to be a family and find a life of asylum in a tough, drug-infested housing estate on the edge of Paris.
Director Jacques Audiard, who previously made A Prophet and Rust and Bone, said: “To receive a prize from the Coen brothers is something pretty exceptional. I’m very touched. I’m thinking of my father.”
Joel Coen said: “This isn’t a jury of film critics. This is a jury of artists who are looking at the work.”
The Grand Prix, essentially the runner-up prize, went to Hungarian newcomer Laszlo Nemes for Son of Saul and its depiction of the Auschwitz, gas chambers.
“This continent is still haunted by this subject,” Laszlo Nemes said.
Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos took the jury award, the third prize, for The Lobster, a dystopian comedy starring Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz.
Best Director went to Taiwan’s Hou Hsiao-hsien for martial arts film The Assassin, his first movie in eight years.
Rooney Mara shared Best Actress for her role in Carol, but her co-star Cate Blanchett was overlooked and instead the jury decided to honor Emmanuelle Bercot for her role in My King.
Vincent Lindon’s Best Actor award was for his role in Stephane Brize’s movie The Measure of a Man.
There were 19 in-competition films this year, though several were aired out of competition, including Mad Max: Fury Road and Pixar’s Inside Out.
Some Cannes attendees protest the festival’s heel’s-only policy for women on the red carpet.
According to new reports, the Cannes Film Festival is not allowing women into screenings if they are wearing flat shoes.
Film producer Valeria Richter, who has part of her left foot amputated, says she was stopped at the Cannes Film Festival for not wearing high heels.
Valeria Richter, who was eventually allowed in, spoke after Cannes was accused of turning away women in flat shoes.
The festival has denied heels are part of the official dress code.
A spokeswoman said ushers had been “reminded” of this, suggesting women in flat shoes would now be admitted.
However, numerous festival-goers have reported seeing women being turned away.
Among them was Asif Kapadia – whose Amy Winehouse documentary premiered in Cannes last weekend – who said his wife had been stopped on the red carpet but was “eventually let in”.
Although Valeria Richter was eventually granted entry, she said “many of my colleagues who can’t wear heels were rejected and did not come in”.
Festival director Thierry Fremaux has said “rumors” of a ban on heels were “unfounded”.
Writing on Twitter, Thierry Fremaux said: “For the stairs, the regulations have not changed: <<No smoking, formal wear>>. There is no mention of heels.”
The row is awkward for Cannes in a year when it was seeking to address sexism in cinema.
The festival opened with a female-directed film for the first time since 1987, and organizers have endorsed a series of Women in Motion talks by stars such as Isabella Rossellini and Salma Hayek.
Carol movie is being tipped for this year’s Cannes Film Festival glory in France.
The film, starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, tells the story of two women having an illicit romance in 1950s New York.
Carol – based on a 1952 novel by Patricia Highsmith, author of The Talented Mr. Ripley – is winning rave reviews for its lead performances.
Cate Blanchett denied speculation suggesting she drew on her own early gay relationships to create the role.
The actress said: “In 2015, the point should be: who cares?”
Carol, directed by Todd Haynes, follows the blossoming relationship between a glamorous married woman (Cate Blanchett) and an impressionable shop girl (Rooney Mara).
Last week, double Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett, 46, reportedly admitted to Variety magazine that she had had many female partners.
However, at a news conference in Cannes, the actress was quick to scotch reports of a gay past.
Carol is seen by some critics as a companion movie to Todd Haynes’ Far From Heaven, about an illicit romance between a white woman and a black man, also set in the 1950s.
The 68th annual Cannes Film Festival is getting under way in the south of France.
This year’s festival is being held from May 13 to 24.
Michael Fassbender and Natalie Portman are among the notables due to attend.
Other stars, among them Cate Blanchett and Matthew McConaughey, are expected to appear during the 12-day event.
Sienna Miller and Jake Gyllenhaal will sit on a competition jury headed by sibling duo Joel and Ethan Coen.
Cannes Film Festival officially kicks off later with a gala screening of French drama La Tete Haute (Standing Tall).
France is well-represented in the race for the festival’s top prize, making up five of the 19 Palme d’Or entries.
Yet this year’s line-up has been criticized for including a number of films by European film-makers that feature both Hollywood stars and English-language dialogue.
They include Youth, from Italy’s Paolo Sorrentino, which stars Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel as old friends vacationing in the Alps.
Another contentious title is The Lobster, from Greece’s Yorgos Lanthimos, which was shot in Dublin and has a cast headed by Colin Farrell.
A more welcomed development this year is the festival’s perceived championing of female film-makers.
La Tete Haute director Emmanuelle Bercot is only the second woman to win the coveted opening night slot since the festival began in 1946.
Director Agnes Varda, who made her name during the French New Wave of the 1960s, will become the first woman to receive an honorary Palme d’Or.
Natalie Portman, meanwhile, is presenting a special screening of her feature directorial debut, A Tale of Love and Darkness, about the early years of Israel.
Hotly anticipated titles this year include a new film version of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, starring Michael Fassbender in the title role.
Also included in the competition line-up is Todd Haynes’ Carol, in which Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara play lovers in 1950s New York.
Films screening out of competition include Woody Allen’s latest, Irrational Man, and Amy, a documentary about Amy Winehouse that has been called “misleading” by the late singer’s father.
Mad Max: Fury Road will also have a special screening on May 14, the same day the latest installment in the apocalyptic action series opens in cinemas.
Amy Winehouse’s father has criticized a documentary about the late singer’s life, saying it’s “misleading”.
Mitch Winehouse says the producers left out key details.
He says the film is unbalanced, and isn’t happy with the way he’s portrayed.
Amy is due to be shown at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
Photo Getty Images
The documentary was made by the same team behind the BAFTA-winning documentary Senna, about the Formula 1 racing driver Ayrton Senna.
Mitch Winehouse, who now fronts the Amy Winehouse Foundation, says the film presents him as not being there to help Amy, something he denies.
His comments come as a spokesperson for Amy Winehouse’s family said they “would like to disassociate themselves from the forthcoming film about their much missed and beloved Amy”.
The filmmakers have defended the documentary saying: “When we were approached to make the film, we came on board with the full backing of the Winehouse family and we approached the project with total objectivity, as with Senna.
“During the production process, we conducted in the region of 100 interviews with people that knew Amy Winehouse; friends, family, former-partners and members of the music industry that worked with her.
“The story that the film tells is a reflection of our findings from these interviews.”
Amy Winehouse died at the age of 27 from alcohol poisoning in July 2011.
This year’s Cannes Film Festival lineups have been announced at a press conference in Paris.
The festival begins on May 13 and ends on May 24 with a jury chaired by Joel and Ethan Coen.
Festival director Thierry Fremaux announced the lineup in Paris on April 16, simultaneously launching a campaign to stem the tide of “selfies” on the red carpet.
“We don’t want to prohibit it, but we want to slow down the process of selfies on the steps,” said Thierry Fremaux.
“We think it’s ridiculous and grotesque and really slows things down.”
“You never look as ugly as you do in a selfie,” he added.
Cate Blanchett, Matthew McConaughey, Marion Cotillard and Michael Caine are among those with films competing at this year’s festival.
The lineup sees many returning auteurs including new films from Gus Van Sant, Nanni Moretti and Jacques Audiard.
Films from Woody Allen and new Pixar animation Inside Out will play out of competition, alongside Asif Kapadia’s Amy Winehouse documentary.
Today’s press conference follows earlier announcements regarding the opening film – La Tete Haute (Standing Tall), by French actress-director Emmanuelle Bercot – and the worldwide premiere of Fury Road, the latest chapter in the revived Mad Max franchise.
Seventeen films were unveiled in competition and 14 in Un Certain Regard, although Thierry Fremaux noted there would be more films added to the lineup in the coming days.
Cate Blanchett will star alongside Rooney Mara in Carol, based on a novel by The Talented Mr. Ripley author Patricia Highsmith. The 1950s New York-set drama is directed by Todd Haynes of Far From Heaven fame.
In Gus Van Sant’s The Sea of Trees, Matthew McConaughey and Ken Watanabe play two men who meet by chance in Japan’s Suicide Forest, where both have gone to end their lives; Naomi Watts also stars.
Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard will co-star in a new adaptation of Macbeth, from up-and-coming Australian director Justin Kurzel, while Italy’s Paolo Sorrentino follows up 2013’s The Great Beauty with the English-language drama Youth starring Michael Caine as a retired orchestra conductor who receives an invitation to perform for the Queen.
This year’s lineups also include two other Italian directors, Gomorrah‘s Matteo Garrone – premiering his The Tale of Tales – and Cannes regular Nanni Moretti, with My Mother.
As tradition dictates, France is represented by four directors – including Jacques Audiard, Maiwenn Le Besco, Valerie Donzelli and first-timer Stephane Brize.
Asia is represented by The Assassin, from Taiwan’s Hou Hsiao-hsien, China’s Jia Zhangke whose Mountains May Depart marks his fourth film at Cannes and Our Little Sister, from Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda.
Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario – a crime drama starring Emily Blunt and Benecio Del Toro – rounds out the trio of directors from the US, alongside Gus Van Sant and Todd Haynes.
Screening out of competition, Woody Allen’s 45th film, Irrational Man, sees Joaquin Phoenix star as a college professor who starts a relationship with one of his students (Emma Stone).
In 2014, the Palme d’Or was won by Winter Sleep, from Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan.
Oscar-winning directors Joel and Ethan Coen are to head this year’s Cannes Film Festival jury.
Joel and Ethan Coen will act be co-presidents of the panel of film-makers and actors who will judge the contenders in the main competition.
The siblings, who are 60 and 57 respectively, won the festival’s Palme d’Or prize for Barton Fink in 1991.
Joel and Ethan Coen also directed No Country for Old Men, Fargo and The Big Lebowski.
“We look forward to returning to Cannes this year,” they said in a statement.
“We welcome as always the opportunity to watch movies there from all over the world.”
It will be the first time the French festival’s competition jury is chaired by two people.
“Cannes is a festival that has been important to us since the very beginning of our career,” the Coens continued.
“Presiding over the jury is a special honor, since we have never heretofore been president of anything.
“We will issue further proclamations at the appropriate time.”
Joel and Ethan Coen have a long history with Cannes, having shown seven out of their 16 features at the event.
Barton Fink also won them the festival’s best director award, an accolade they received again for Fargo in 1996 and The Man Who Wasn’t There in 2001.
They were last honored at the event in 2013, when Inside Llewyn Davis was awarded its Grand Jury prize.
The Coens’ trophy cabinet also boasts four Oscars, two Baftas and a Golden Globe.
The 2015 Cannes Film Festival takes place from May 13 to 24. Its official line-up and the other jury members will be announced in April.
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