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.
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Baker accepted the Palme d'Or with his movie's star, Mikey Madison, watching in the audience at the Cannes closing ceremony on Saturday. The win marks a new high point for Baker, the director of "The Florida Project. It's also, remarkably, the fifth straight Palme d'Or won by indie distributor Neon, following Parasite, Titane, Triangle of Sadness and last year's winner, Anatomy of a Fall.
"This, literally, has been my singular goal as a filmmaker for the past 30 years, so I'm not really sure what I'm going to do with the rest of my life," said Baker, laughing.
But 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."
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 Coppola appeared to present it to him, reuniting two of the most pivotal figures of the last half-century of American moviemaking.
All We Imagine As Light, about sisterhood in modern Mumbai, won the Grand Prix, Cannes' second-highest honour. Payal Kapadia's second feature was the first Indian in competition in Cannes in 30 years.
The jury awarded a special prize to Mohammad Rasoulof's The Seed of the Sacred Fig, a drama made secretly in Iran. Days ahead of the film's premiere, Rasoulof, facing an eight-year prison sentence, fled Iran on foot. His film, which includes real footage from the 2022-2023 demonstrations in Iran, channels Iranian oppression into a family drama.
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.
Some thought Moore might take best actress but that award instead went to an ensemble of actors: Karla Sofia Gascon, Zoe Saldana, 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. Gascon, who accepted the award, is the first trans actor to win a major prize at Cannes.
Emilia Perez also won Cannes' jury prize, giving a rare two awards at a festival where prizes are usually spread around.
Best actor went to Jesse Plemons for Yorgos Lanthimos' Kinds of Kindness.
Portuguese director Miguel Gomes won best director for his Grand Tour, an Asian odyssey in which a man flees his fiancee from Rangoon in 1917.
The Camera d'Or, the prize for best first feature across all of Cannes official selections, went to Halfdan Ullmann Tondel for Armand. Tondel is the grandson of Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman and Norwegian actor Liv Ullman.
Australian Associated Press
