Iranian director Jafar Panahi wins Palme d’Or at Cannes for It Was Just an Accident

The dissident Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi has received the highest prize on the Cannes movie pageant for his drama It Was Just an Accident, impressed through his stints of imprisonment by the hands of the Iranian executive.

The movie was once the primary made through the director after being launched from jail in 2023 – even though he has persisted to direct through the years in spite of being expressly forbidden to take action.

It Was Just an Accident is his maximum private drama thus far, following 5 characters who imagine they have got known the one who anonymously tortured them in jail.

“The first time I was in prison I was in solitary confinement,” Panahi mentioned remaining week.

“I was on my own in a tiny cell and they would take me out blindfolded to a place where I would sit in front of a wall and hear this voice at my back. It was the voice of the man who would question me – sometimes for two hours, sometimes for eight hours.

“And I would just hang on his voice all that time, fantasising about who this person was from his voice. And I had an intuition that someday this voice would be an aspect of something I’d write or shoot and give a creative life to.”

After being introduced with the Palme d’Or, Panahi thanked his circle of relatives and collaborators, and mentioned: “I think it’s the moment to ask everyone, all the Iranians with opinions different from others, in Iran and throughout the world … I’d like to ask them one thing: Put all the problems and differences aside. The most important thing is surely our country and the freedom of our country.”

The victory method a outstanding 6th consecutive win for US studio Neon, following its triumphs for Anora, Anatomy of a Fall, Triangle of Sadness, Titane and Parasite – the primary and remaining of which went on to brush the board on the Oscars.

Second prize – the Grand Prix – went to Joachim Trier’s home drama Sentimental Value, which stars Stellan Skarsgård as a tough film-maker who makes an attempt to reconcile along with his daughter after years of estrangement through casting her in a brand new, extremely private movie.

The movie is a reunion for Trier and Renate Reinsve, who starred in his 2021 hit, The Worst Person within the World.

Meanwhile the jury – or 3rd – prize was once a tie between the Spanish director Oliver Laxe’s Sirat and the German director Mascha Schilinski’s Sound of Falling. The director Hasan Hadi received the primary movie prize – the Camera d’Or – for The President’s Cake, the primary award ever given to an Iraqi movie in Cannes.

Best actor honours went to Wagner Moura for The Secret Agent, which additionally received the most productive director prize for Kleber Mendonça Filho, whilst The Little Sister’s big name, Nadia Melliti, took very best actress.

The particular prize was once introduced firstly of the rite through the jury president, Juliette Binoche, to the Chinese director Bi Gan for his trippy meditation at the dying of the universe, Resurrection. The Dardennes brothers received very best screenplay for The Young Mother’s Home.

Binoche’s majority feminine jury additionally incorporated the Italian actor Alba Rohrwacher, the Indian director Payal Kapadia, the French-Moroccan creator Leïla Slimani, the American actors Halle Berry and Jeremy Strong, the South Korean film-maker Hong Sang-soo, the Mexican director Carlos Reygadas and the Congolese film-maker Dieudo Hamadi.

Binoche mentioned that It Was Just an Accident “really stood out”. She added: “It’s very human and political at the same time because he comes from a complicated country, politically speaking … The film springs from a feeling of resistance, survival, which is absolutely necessary today. So we thought it was important to give this film the paramount award.”

The pageant was once marked through real-world drama, from the sentencing of one in every of its former lions, Gerard Depardieu, on sexual attack fees at the first day of the pageant, to almost-daily diatribes towards Donald Trump’s film price lists plan through film-makers together with Wes Anderson, Robert De Niro and Richard Linklater.

The pageant additionally featured a debatable gala honouring Kevin Spacey, a delegate injured through a falling palm tree, and the banning from the purple carpet of an actor accused of rape.

On the overall day, an influence lower believed through many to be sabotage hit the pageant headquarters for 5 hours; the final rite proceeded regardless because of backup turbines.

Competition awards

Palme d’Or Jafar Panahi, It Was Just an Accident
Grand Prix Joachim Trier, Sentimental Value
Best director Kleber Mendonça Filho, The Secret Agent
Best actor Wagner Moura, The Secret Agent
Best actress Nadia Melliti, Little Sister
Jury prize Sirat, Oliver Laxe and Sound of Falling, Mascha Schilinski
Special award (Prix spécial) Resurrection, Bi Gan
Best Screenplay Four

Other prizes

Camera d’Or The President’s Cake, Hasan Hadi
Camera d’Or particular point out My Father’s Shadow, Akinola Davies Jr.
Short movie Palme d’Or I’m Glad You’re Dead Now, Tawfeek Barhom
Short movie particular point out Ali, Adnan Al Rajeev
Golden Eye documentary prize Imago, Déni Oumar Pitsaev
Golden Eye particular jury prize The Six Billion Dollar Man, Eugene Jarecki
Queer Palm Little Sister, Hafsia Herzi
Palme Dog Panda, The Love That Remains
Fipresci award (festival) The Secret Agent, Kleber Mendonça Filho
Fipresci award (Un Certain Regard) Urchin, Harris Dickinson
Fipresci award (parallel sections) Dandelion’s Odyssey, Momoko Seto

Un Certain Regard

Un Certain Regard award The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo, Diego Céspedes
Jury prize A Poet, Simón Mesa Soto
Best director Tarzan and Arab Nasser, Once Upon a Time in Gaza
Best efficiency Cléo Diara, I Only Rest within the Storm; Frank Dillane, Urchin
Best screenplay Harry Lighton, Pillion
Special point out Norah, Tawfik Alzaidi

Directors’ Fortnight

Europa Cinemas Label award Wild Foxes, Valéry Carnoy
Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers prize Wild Foxes, Valéry Carnoy
Audience Choice award The President’s Cake, Hasan Hadi

Critics’ Week

Grand prize A Useful Ghost, Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke
French Touch prize Imago, Déni Oumar Pitsaev
GAN Foundation award for distribution Le Pacte, Left-Handed Girl
Louis Roederer Foundation Rising Star award Théodore Pellerin, Nino
Leitz Cine Discovery Prize (brief movie) L’mina, Randa Maroufi
Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers prize Guillermo Galoe and Victor Alonso-Berbel, Sleepless City
Canal+ brief movie award Erogenesis, Xandra Popescu