French Director Justine Triet Takes the Palme d’Or for ‘Anatomy of a Fall,’ Japan’s Kōji Yakusho Bags Best Actor

French film director Justine Triet’s tense and gripping courtroom drama, Anatomy of A Fall, won the Palme d’Or at the 76th Cannes Film Festival on Saturday.

This is the third time ever that the festival’s top prize, considered the most prestigious film award in the world, has gone to a woman director.

French director Julia Ducournau had won the award in 2021 for her body-horror film Titane, and Jane Campion took the prize in 1993 for The Piano.

Ducournau was part of the nine-member jury, headed by Swedish director and winner of two Palme d’Ors Ruben Ostlund, which decided all the awards for the festival’s main competition section. Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City, Ken Loach’s The Old Oak and seven films by women directors — the highest number ever — were among the 21 films in this year’s competition section. 

The award to Triet was presented by actress-activist Jane Fonda at the closing ceremony held at the 2,300-seater Grand Theatre Lumiere. In her acceptance speech, Triet criticized how the protest against pension reforms in France “has been denied and repressed in a shocking way.” She also slammed French President Emmanuel Macron, who has signed a law that raises the retirement age in France from 62 to 64.  

Anatomy of A Fall, starring German actress Sandra Hüller, is about the mysterious death of a man. His wife — a writer — is put on trial to prove her innocence, but as evidence is produced in court, her attitude to marriage and her role in it is as much on trial as she is.

The Grand Prix, which is the festival’s second most important award, went to the German film, The Zone of Interest. Based on a Martin Amis’ novel of the same title, the film by British-Jewish director Jonathan Glazer is about an SS commandant who manages the gas chambers and crematoriums at the Auschwitz concentration camp. He, his wife and children live right outside the concentration camp compound. 

The film observes the normalcy and mundanity of their family life as shots are fired and smoke billows from the chimneys of Auschwitz. Without venturing into the concentration camp, the film shows their complicity in the holocaust as the commandant’s wife receives expensive fur coats and clothes belonging to Jewish women.

Quirky Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki received the Jury Award for his adorable, heart-warming love story, Fallen Leaves. The film, which is in the director’s signature deadpan style with silences broken by funny one-liners, was one of the rare films at Cannes which received universal love and praise. 

The best director award went to Tran Anh Hung for his French “foodie” film, The Pot-au-Feu (The Passion of Dodin Bouffant), set in a 19th Century French chateau. The film, starring Benoît Magimel and Juliette Binoche, focuses on the shared passion between a celebrated gourmet and his cook of nearly 20 years, which extends from the kitchen to their personal lives. In accepting the prize, the director thanked his wife, then corrected himself, identifying her as “his cook” instead.

The honors for best actor went to Japan’s Kōji Yakusho, who plays a middle-aged, working-class man in Tokyo who cleans toilets in Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days. 

Turkey’s Merve Dizdar was named best actress for her role in Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s About Dry Grasses, a film about human frailties.

The award for best screenplay went to Sakamoto Yûji for Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda’s film, Monster. The film’s story, about two school-going boys and a burning building, is told from different perspectives, each one seemingly implicating an innocent person.

All the winners received the Palme d’Or, a gorgeous trophy made by luxury jeweler Chopard. It has a palm leaf, made of 24-carat gold, sitting on a crystal cushion and is presented in a case of blue Morocco leather.  

This year’s Cannes Film Festival was one of the biggest ever. Harrison Ford’s last hurrah as Indiana Jones, The Dial of Destiny, and Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, were amongst the several films that had their world premieres at Cannes.