“Shoplifters”, a heartwrenching family tale by Japanese veteran director Hirokazu Kore-eda, won the Palme d’Or top prize at the Cannes film festival Saturday.
Spike Lee accepted the runner-up Grand Prix for “BlacKkKlansman”, a searing broadside against racism with the stranger-than-fiction true story of an African-American police officer who manages to infiltrate the highest levels of the Ku Klux Klan.
Jury president Cate Blanchett said the film, which explicitly links the 1970s tale and white nationalism in the Trump era, “blew us out of the cinema”.
But the most stunning moment of the night came when Italian star Asia Argento, who has said she was raped by Weinstein at Cannes in 1997, took the microphone and vowed to fight for justice for other victims.
Lebanese actress-director Nadine Labaki, one of three female filmmakers among the 21 contenders, earned the third-place Jury Prize for “Capernaum” set among the poorest of the poor in Beirut and featuring a devastating performance by a 13-year-old Syrian refugee boy.
Kazakhstan’s Samal Yeslyamova nabbed best actress for “Ayka” by director Sergey Dvortsevoy for her moving portrayal of a young jobless immigrant from post-Soviet Central Asia who abandons her baby in Moscow.
Polish Oscar winner Pawel Pawlikowski took the prize for best director for “Cold War”, a tragic love story set against the backdrop of the Iron Curtain.
