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Spike Lee, president of the 2021 Cannes Film Festival jury, accidentally announced that Julia Ducournau’s “Titanium” won the Palme d’Or in what was supposed to be her opening speech at the awards ceremony. The revelation shook the crowd inside the Grand Théâtre Lumière and made social networks vibrate at the start of a ceremony that traditionally ends with the coronation of the winner of the Palme.
Her mistake came when the host of the ceremony, French actress Audrey Tatou, asked Lee, “Can you tell me which prize is the top prize?” Lee stood up and, instead of telling him that the award for Best Actor would be the first to be awarded, said, “Yes I can. The film that won the Palme d’Or is ‘Titanium’.” Juror Melanie Laurent reached out to Lee and shouted, “No! While other jurors laughed or buried their faces in their hands.
At the end of the ceremony, when it came back to Lee to officially announce what he had already blurted out, he said, “I know I got a lot of suspense out of the night. It wasn’t on purpose.
“Titanium” would have been a daring and provocative victory under any circumstances, because Ducournau’s film is much more daring, violent and sexual than the usual Palme d’Or. This is the second consecutive victory for a film distributed by Neon, which also had the Cannes winner (and an Oscar) in 2019 “Parasite”.
This also makes Ducournau the second female director to win the Palme d’Or, after Jane Campion for “Le piano” in 1993. (Actresses Lea Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos were specifically named in the Palme citation for “Le bleu is the hottest color “in 2013, but this movie was directed by Abdellatif Kechiche.)
Asghar Farhadi’s tense moral drama “A Hero” and Juno Kuosmanen’s slow-paced “Compartment # 6” shared the Grand Prize, which goes to the second-ranked film. “A Hero” will be distributed in the United States by Amazon, while “Compartment No. 6” was acquired by Sony Pictures Classics after its Cannes premiere.
Caleb Landry Jones was named the winner of the Best Actor award for his performance as an actual mass shooter in Justin Kurzel’s “Nitram”. Renate Reinsve won the Best Actress award for “The Worst Person in the World” by Joachim Trier.
Two films shared the Jury Prize, which is essentially the third place in Cannes: “Memoria”, a dream film starring Tilda Swinton and directed by former Palme winner Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and “Ahed’s Knee”, from Israeli director Nadav Lapid.
The award for best director went to Leos Carax for the opening film, “Annette”, a musical starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard with songs by the group Sparks. The screenplay award went to writer-director Ryusuke Hamaguchi for his Haruki Murakami adaptation of “Drive My Car”.
The Camera d’Or, which rewards the best first film in any section or frame of the festival, was awarded to “Murina” by Croatian director Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic, which was screened in the independent box of the Fortnight directors.
The jury’s choices were mostly daring, alternating between graphic and daring (and a bit crazy) films like “Titanium” and “Annette” and slow and daring films like “Memoria” and “Compartment # 6”. The three American films of directors Wes Anderson, Sean Baker and Sean Penn won nothing, as did Benedetta, sexually explicit and well received by Paul Verhoeven.
This year’s Main Competition section featured 24 films, the highest number of films competing for the Palme d’Or since 1974, when 26 did. Three of the directors in competition – Weerasethakul, Jacques Audiard with “Paris, 13e District ”and Nanni Moretti with“ Three Floors ”- are former Palme d’Or winners.
Besides Lee and Laurent, the jurors of the five-woman, four-man panel were directors Mati Diop, Jessica Hausner and Kleber Mendonca Filho, actors Maggie Gyllenhaal, Tahar Rahim and Song Kang Ho and singer Mylene Farmer.
The Cannes Film Festival did not take place last year, so no awards were given. In 2019, the Palme d’Or went to Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite”, which became only the second film to win the Palme and then to win the Oscar for Best Picture. The first was “Marty”, in 1955. (At the first Cannes, in 1946, the first prize was called the Grand Prix, and 11 different films were tied for honor; one was “The Lost Weekend “, which also won the Oscar.)
The winners:
Palme d’Or: “Titanium,” Julia Ducournau
Grand Prize: “A hero”, Asghar Farhadi and “Compartment n ° 6”, Juho Kuosmanen
Best director: Léos Carax, “Annette”
Best scenario: “Drive my car”, Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Best actor: Caleb Landry Jones, “Nitram”
Best actress: Renate Reinsve, “The Worst Person in the World”
Jury Prize: “Memoria”, Apichatpong Weerasethakul; and “Ahed’s Knee”, Nadav Lapid
Golden Camera: “Murina”, Antoneta Address Kusijanovic
Palme d’or, short film: “All the crows in the world” (“Tian Xai Wu Ya”), Tang Yi
Special mention: “August Sky”, Jasmin Tenucci
Honorary Award: Marco Bellocchio
Check out TheWrap’s Cannes digital magazine issue here. You can find all of TheWrap’s Cannes coverage here.
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