Cannes presents the Palme d'Or, with a story in suspense



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CANNES, France (AP) – The Palme d'Or, the big prize at the Cannes Film Festival, was awarded on Saturday.

The Palme d'Or is decided by a nine-member jury, chaired this year by filmmaker Alejandro Inarritu. Their deliberations are done in secret, so what will win is always a guessing game.

But important victories could be won if some of the most acclaimed films of the festival won. If the love story of the French director Celine Sciamma "Portrait of a lady on fire" was winning, it was the first time that a filmmaker won the Palme d'Or. Sciamma's film, about two women in the 18th century in France, has been hailed as a feminist masterpiece.

Jane Campion, in 1993, won the title "The Piano" in 1993 with Jane Palion in the film "Farewell My Concubine" by Chen Kaige. The Palme d'Or was held in 2013 when director Abdellatif Kechiche and actresses Leya Seydoux and Adele Exarchopoulos shared the prize for "Blue, it's the hottest color".

Sciamma is a 40-year-old screenwriter and director who helped create 50 / 50X2020, the French version of Time's Up. She said in an interview that a Palme victory for "Portrait of a Woman on Fire" would be a bigger win for women.

"It would mean a lot to a lot of people," she said. "It would be the most important."

Pedro Almodovar could make personal history by winning the Palme for "Pain and Glory". Although he is one of the most prominent filmmakers in Europe for decades, the 69-year-old Spanish director has never won Cannes's first prize while he was in the race. five times before. "Pain and Glory", a self-reflective drama starring Antonio Banderas in a fictional version of Almodovar, has been received as the filmmaker's best work for years.

The class satire of "Bong Joon-ho," "Parasite," also speaks of a poor family of prostitutes who find a job in a wealthy family. Two years ago, Bong participated in the Cannes competition with "Okja", a film distributed in North America by Netflix. After the creation in Cannes of "The Meyerowitz Stories" by Noah Baumbach (also a Netflix release), the festival decided that all films in competition required a theatrical distribution in France. Netflix has since been removed from the festival.

A victory for "Parasite" would be the first Korean film to win the Palme d'Or.

The Hirokazu Kore-eda Awards, "The Thieves on Display", were won last year in Cannes. Italian director Asia Argento said: "I was raped by Harvey Weinstein. The festival was his hunting ground. Weinstein, who denied sexually molesting Argento, was for decades an important presence in Cannes, which struggled to adapt to the post-MeToo era.

This year, under the pressure of 5050×2020, the festival has published a breakdown by sex of its submissions and selections. According to Cannes, about 27% of its official selections were led by women. The main channel of the 21 films included four films directed by women, which links the festival's highest precedent. Mati Diop, the Franco-Senegalese director, became the first black woman to compete in Cannes with her first feature, Atlantics.

The 72nd edition of Cannes also had its moment of glory on the red carpet. Elton John presented his biopic "Rocketman" at the festival, joining star Taron Egerton for a duet at the seaside after the premiere. Quentin Tarantino unveiled his story "Once upon a time … in Hollywood," in Los Angeles, with Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio, 25 years after Pulp Fiction's win in the Palme d'Or.

Tarantino hopes to win again. His film won on Friday the annual Palme Dog, a prize awarded by the most memorable canine critic of the festival. Pitt's character has a faithful pit bull in the movie.

"We will see what we will see," Tarantino said, accepting the prize on Friday. "But at least I will not go home empty-handed."

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Follow AP writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

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