The Ecumenical Jury at the 61st Festival de Cannes has awarded the Ecumenical Film Prize to
Adoration by Atom Egoyan (Canada 2008)
Simon, an adolescent with a complex family history, attempts to create his identity while overcoming cultural stereotypes. His invented personal story, which he presents to his class, explodes in Internet forums. He must contend both emotionally and intellectually with the issues raised. Using a poetic cinematography, the director presents traditional and contemporary symbols and objects to invite us to re-evaluate existing clichés about the Other or that which is foreign in our own culture and religion.
Atom Egoyan at the award ceremony, with (from left) Alyda Faber, Joël Baumann, and jury president René Aucourt
The 2008 Ecumenical Jury: René Aucourt (France), President Alyda Faber (Canada) Margrit Frölich (Germany) Marie-Thérèse Kreidy (Lebanon) Lukas Jirsa (Czech Republic) Joël Baumann (France)
Spirituality in the Cinema – Ecumenical Jury at Cannes Ron Holloway, Berlin, 30 May 2008
Stroll through the lower level of the Palais des Festivals at the Cannes film festival, and you bump into the Ecumenical Jury Stand – prominently positioned on the corner of Row 13. Throughout the festival, the stand is as a beehive of activity.
Respected by critics and filmmakers alike, the Ecumenical Jury has been part and parcel of the Cannes film festival for the past 34 years. More often than not, the awards given by the Ecumenical Jury bear the same distinction, the same renomé, the same mark of excellence as those handed out by the festival’s International Jury and the FIPRESCI International Critics Jury. On some occasions in the past, when the decisions of the Ecumenical and FIPRESCI Juries have overlapped, the respective awards were handed out jointly to the winning filmmaker.
Composed of six jury members – three appointed by SIGNIS (World Catholic Association for Communication) and three by INTERFILM (International Interchurch Film Organization) – the Ecumenical Jury can look back on some remarkable achievements in its bid to support quality productions by visionary filmmakers. One look at the record confirms its status as a respected voice in active support of films that “touch the spiritual dimension of our existence, expressing the values of justice, human dignity, respect for the environment, peace and solidarity.” In other words, “these values, shared in all cultures, are those of the Christian Gospel.”
During its early years at Cannes, the Ecumenical Jury invited such celebrated filmmakers as Poland's Krzysztof Zanussi and Hungary’s Imre Gyöngyössy to serve as jury members. Zanussi was jury president in 1983, when Andrei Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia (Nostalgia) (Italy) was awarded the Ecumenical Prize.
In the recent past, the Ecumenical Jury has awarded two films directed by Iranian filmmakers: Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Safar é Ghandehar (Road to Kandahar, aka Kandahar) (Iran/France, 2001) and Samira Makhmalbaf’s Pan é asr (At Five in the Afternoon) (Iran/France, 2003). Shot in Afghanistan, both films pleaded in exacting times for more tolerance and understanding among peoples and cultures. Moreover, while Kandahar and At Five in the Afternoon made history at Cannes, their awards by the Ecumenical Jury also boosted their chances for broader distribution around the globe.
Over the years, the Ecumenical Jury at Cannes has continually awarded outstanding films that reflect not only the ever evolving standards of film art, but also the spiritual pursuit of talented filmmakers as they seek meaningful answers to existence in today’s complex world. Its openness to social, cultural and religious diversity is reflected in its decisions. To mention just a few: Theo Angelopoulos’s Mia eoniotita ke mia mera (Eternity and One Day) (Greece, 1998, Golden Palm winner), Shinji Aoyama’s Eureka (Japan, 2000), Aki Kaurismäki’s Mies vailla meneisyyttä (The Man Without a Past) (Finland, 2002), Walter Salles’s Diarios de motocicleta (Motorcycle Diaries) (Brazil, 2004), Michael Haneke’s Caché (Hidden) (Austria/France, 2005), Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Babel (Mexico/USA, 2006), and Fatih Akin’s Auf der anderen Seite (The Edge of Heaven) (Germany/Turkey, 2007).
True, all these Ecumenical Jury award winners were heralded in the media as authentic works of film art. But they also can be described as films that strove to define the very meaning of life itself. The same is pretty much true of other films awarded by an Ecumenical Jury at key international festivals throughout the year – at Berlin, Locarno, Karlovy Vary, Montreal, Mannheim-Heidelberg, Kiev, Leipzig, Oberhausen, Cottbus, Zlin, Yerevan, to name just the first dozen that come to mind.
Indeed, Hans Hodel, Swiss festival coordinator at INTERFILM, takes pride in annually adding a new festival to his list for both Ecumenical and Interfilm jury work. He notes, too, how often INTERFILM Awards at specialized festivals – like Saarbrücken, a German-language event, or Lübeck, a Scandinavian showcase – are publicized on EuroNews and other media outlets.
Considering the heavy screening schedule, plus other demanding protocol challenges to be met at Cannes, how does the Ecumenical Jury there manage to get the job done? To say nothing of arriving at cross-cultural decisions in regard to film entries that puzzle even the most astute of film critics. One reason is its organizational acumen. Denyse Muller, as a key member of the INTERFILM Board of Directors, knows Cannes like the back of her hand. Not just the inner workings of the festival, but also its traditional values as a major showcase of film art. This year, she and her SIGNIS colleague, Jos Horemans, welcomed six jury members from France, Germany, Canada, Lebanon, and the Czech Republic.
Another reason is its commitment to the spiritual dimension in the cinema. The Ecumenical Prize at Cannes 2008 was awarded to Atom Egoyan’s Adoration (Canada), a film that explores cultural intolerance and misinformation. “Adoration invites us to re-evaluate existing cliches about the Other or that which is foreign in our own culture and religion,” the Ecumenical Jury stated in its declaration. “I am overwhelmed by this prize because it places my film in another context,” said Egoyan upon receiving his award. “Adoration is an intimate film. It’s very much rooted in my culture. The jury got the movie.” Eleven years ago, back in 1997, the Toronto-based, Armenian-Canadian filmmaker was also awarded the Ecumenical Prize for The Sweet Hereafter.
Cannes—a city on a hill cresting the Mediterranean Ocean, planted with non-indigenous palm trees in the 19th century to create a tropical beach resort. In this setting, we find the world’s most glamorous film festival, “the heartbeat of cinema,” as Wim Wenders called it. This festival is unique because of its well established international film market complete with mini-screening rooms where prospective buyers can view films. What is the Cannes Film Festival like? Did you see any stars? These were the leading questions when I returned home.
A single word describes the festival for me: intensity. We watched from three to five films a day, usually starting with the first screening at 8:30 in the morning. One of those films, Che ( directed by Steven Soderbergh) was 4 ½ hours long. Between screenings, our jury met regularly to discuss the competition films at length. The excitement of the festival began each day with people converging upon the Palais for the first film, festival goers often visible in the crowds with their silver Cannes bags. Given the strict stage managing of appearances of actors, directors, and producers, press conferences offered the best opportunity to see ‘the stars’ close up. Otherwise, images of famous directors and actors were as mediated by the media to those present at the festival as those who were not there. Before the gala screening of Vicki Cristina Barcelona began, the Ecumenical Jury, seated in the rear of the balcony of the Grand Théâtre Lumière, was able to see only an image of Woody Allen on the giant screen, seated in the obscured seats below us. On another occasion I joined a thick crowd outside the press conference room; I could hear people calling “Spielberg”, but could only see him as an image on the raised digital cameras in front of me.
This year’s festival marked the first time in twenty-one years that a French film was awarded the Palm d’Or. It was also dubbed the year of the documentary for the strong showing of documentary films, including those that adapt innovative techniques and subjects to this genre, as well as films blending fiction and documentary techniques.
Prize of the Ecumenical Jury
The prize of the 34th Ecumenical Jury at Cannes was awarded to Adoration, a film directed by a Canadian (of Armenian origin), Atom Egoyan. Just over ten years ago, Egoyan won an Ecumenical Prize for his film, The Sweet Hereafter. The Ecumenical Jury awards its prize to a film that expresses strong artistic merit and creativity, has a universal aspect, elicits human transformation, and is consistent with the values of the gospel. In some cases, another consideration is whether or not a prize from this jury will ameliorate distribution of a film that might not otherwise receive the attention and distribution it deserves.
Adoration is a thickly layered film that is bound to provoke discussion. An adolescent boy, Simon, reinvents himself as the child of parents involved in a terrorist bomb plot, a story which is taken up on internet forums. Filmed with Egoyan’s signature multilayered and fractured plot lines, the themes of this film - terrorism, the seductions of victimization, adoration and vilification, the impact of high speed technologies on the “slow” time of human relationships, the cultural drift of religious symbols and narratives - are played out through Simon’s relationships to his deceased parents, the uncle who has given up his twenties to care for his nephew, his grandfather, and his French teacher. Images of poignant beauty evoke the fierce yearning and loss experienced by the main character; the ways in which Simon is adored by several adults, and his own adoration of his lost mother. Through the narrative strands of intergenerational family conflict and the larger social scene of terrorism, the film asks: who is made to bear the rage of others? What are the intimate trajectories of social violence? Related to this, as Egoyan discussed during a press conference, is the exploration of the religious and ethnic pluralism of Toronto where the film is set, particularly with a view to the ways that religious symbols have become cut off from religious communities and narratives (the hajib, Christmas decorations and crèche), becoming either fetishized or devoid of meaning. How can these traditions be expressed in new ways? What new symbols are needed to bear the weight of human yearning for connection and the struggle to relate well to “the other or that which is foreign in our own culture and religion”?
The Palme d’Or
This year’s Palme d’Or for feature film, by unanimous decision of the Festival Jury with its president Sean Penn, went to Laurent Cantet’s cinema direct film, Entre les murs. The director contends that schools are often viewed as safe havens from the problems of society, but he views them as microcosms of the larger society. Based on a novel by François Begaudeau, who also plays the lead role, this film is focussed on the conversations between François and his French class over the course of a year at a highschool in a suburb of Paris where there are large numbers of new immigrants to the country. François takes risks with pedagogy because he believes in reciprocity between students and instructors, and in the possibility of teachers caring for their students as unique individuals. As members of the Festival Jury pointed out at the final press conference, the film does not resolve the contradictions that emerge in the course of François’ pedagogical techniques, but exposes both the violence and the hope of his interactions with students. The Jury cited as reasons for their choice, among other things, the “magical performances” in the film, and the film’s “generosity” that offers us an opportunity to be “less stupid,” given its persistent examination of difficult questions about how we can co-exist and love each other amidst differences of race, language, religion, and social power.
Other major prizes
Two major prizes went to Italian films, which a jury member described as “twins” in the sense that both Gomorra (Grand Prix to director Matteo Garrone) and Il Divo (Jury Prize to Paolo Sorrentino) explore the ways in which democracy can be compromised in Western civil society. Garrone’s film, about organized crime in Naples and Caserta, is notable for some key signature images that express the pathos and horror of the Camorra’s activities. Sorrentino’s film, with its virtuosic visual style reminiscent of Francis Bacon’s Screaming Popes series of paintings and rock video rolled into one, offers a subtle and powerful portrait of a long serving Italian Prime Minister, Giulio Andreotti, repeatedly charged with corruption but never convicted.
The best director prize goes to a film with distinctive creative and technical power - this year’s prize was awarded to Nuri Bilge Ceylan for Three Monkeys. The visual power of the opening scene - a circle of light in a big dark, a car driving along a secluded road at night, a wavering light that gets smaller and smaller and finally disappears - opens up the drama of a family implicated, through bribery, in the hit-and-run accident of a politician. The director finds that the visual narrative of film is an apt medium for his aim of exploring the complexity of the human soul, which has within it “the coexistence of the power to rule and the potential to forgive, the interest in the most holy and … the lowest banality, and love and hate.” He achieves this through the sombre weather of the film, resonant close ups of faces, lonely cityscapes, strained elliptical conversations between characters, and moments of ironic humour.
The award for best performance by an actress went to Sandra Corveloni, in Linha de Passe (directed by Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas), playing Cleusa, the single mother of four sons of different fathers, expecting a fifth child. Each son tries to find his own way out of the daily frustrations and humiliations of their poverty in barrios of Sao Paulo. Corveloni’s performance evokes the strain of poverty’s indignities upon a mother’s love for her children. The award for best performance by an actor went to Benicio Del Toro for the role of Che Guevara (directed by Steven Soderbergh) in Che, the longest film of the competition at 4 hours and 28 minutes. Del Toro is equally convincing as a successful leader of the revolution in Cuba and the thwarted and defeated revolutionary of Bolivia. The Belgian Dardenne brothers, Jean-Pierre and Luc, won the prize for best screenplay for their film, The Silence of Lorna. This film considers the issue of immigration and organized crime in Europe through the narrative of a young Albanian woman, Lorna, who gains Belgian citizenship by marrying a heroin addict, Claudy, who is to be killed by a mobster so that Lorna can marry a Russian Mafioso willing to pay well for citizenship. The plan depends upon Lorna’s complicit silence. The question of the cost of using other human beings as means to an end is treated in an elliptical filmic style, with a strong palette of primary colours.
Finally, the Festival Jury awarded two special prizes for the 61st festival, the first to Catherine Deneuve for her performance in Conte de Noël, a strong epic drama of a family haunted by a child who died because none of its siblings was a compatible tissue donor, and the second to Clint Eastwood (director), for The Exchange. Based on a true story of a boy who disappears from a working class neighbourhood in Los Angeles in 1928, the mother is confronted, months later, with both the LA Police and a boy insisting that he is her missing son, against her protest that he is not.
Additional competition films
In my view, two additional competition films deserve comment. Waltz with Bashir (directed by Ari Folman) opened to rave reviews at the festival but didn’t receive a prize. An innovative documentary, this series of interviews was transposed into animation to allow the visual representation of memory, visions, and dreams reported by Israeli men who fought in the 1982 Lebanon war. The director was part of this offensive, and began to explore his complete loss of memory about the events of this war when a friend told him about a recurring nightmare of being chased by 26 dogs—as it turns out, the number of dogs he killed during raids on Lebanese villages. The film explores the long aftermath of war on the perpetrators, the sick terror and useless destruction of war, as well as questions of memory, truth, and responsibility. From the sepia tones and dark contrasts of the animation, the film concludes with documentary footage of the massacres at Sabra and Shatila refugee camps by Christian Phalangists, which the Israeli soldiers controlling the area did nothing to prevent.
24 City, directed by Jia Zhangke, is a documentary style fiction film about the shutting down of a state owned armaments factory in Chengdu, China, to be replaced by luxury apartments. Eight characters, spanning three generations of factory workers, are interviewed about their roles in the factory, the final two speaking about the blend of communism and capitalism in China. The most striking thing about this film is the lovely images of unlovely things, for example, images of empty factory rooms, a burning wheel, and a factory demolition, the cloud of dust creeping toward and finally engulfing the camera. Almost static portraits of families recur throughout the film which is divided into chapters, each one signalled by poetic fragments by Chinese poets as well as Western poets like Yeats. Many common sayings cited by the characters lend a varied emotional tone to the film, ranging from heavy irony to pathos to celebration of life.
“Un Certain Regard”
The Ecumenical Jury judged only competition films, but we had the opportunity to watch a number of films in the section “Un Certain Regard.” The winning film of this section was Tulpan, directed by Sergey Dvortsevoy, about a man who joins his sister and husband in their life on the Kazakh steppe after completing his military service. The film creates a fiction with an ethnographic documentary feel. As Margrit Froelich writes, the film evokes a “buoyant and pulsating rhythm as well as an intensity that brings the viewer in touch with the elementary powers of life.” The Prize of Hope in this section went to Johnny Mad Dog, an intense, vivid film about child soldiers in Africa.
The Caméra D’Or was awarded to a film screened in “Un Certain Regard,” Steve McQueen’s Hunger. This film traces the intensification of protest by Republican prisoners in Northern Ireland from the Blanket and No-Wash Protest to hunger strikes, starting with Bobby Sands, the first prisoner to die. As in 24 Cities, languorous shots create beauty in terrible circumstances: the abstract art of a shit smeared wall, the falling snow as a guard smokes at the prison wall, the repetitive sounds as a man sweeps up puddles of urine directed out into the hall by prisoners. The film’s aesthetic and narrative calibrates the ambiguity of the situation from the perspective of both guards and prisoners.
Any way you look at it, 2008 was a watershed year at the Cannes film festival. Looking ahead, this was Thierry Frémaux's first year as délégée general, the first time he was listed in the catalogue as the man who put his own signature on the selection. Last year, he was down simply as director artistique, to wit: the festival's artistic director under the friendly aegis of président Gilles Jacob. Looking back, Gilles Jacob is currently penning his collection of memories as the festival icon over the past 30 years. Knowing Jacob's unrestrained love for the Festival de Cannes, a spring event he has personally molded into an institution that stands head and shoulders over all other "A-category" festivals, his memoirs will surely offer insights into how he was able to balance the ideals of auteur cinema with the public's demand for starlettes on the grand staircase and mediocre box-office entertainment fare. This said, Thierry Frémaux found himself uncomfortably on the firing line at the 61st Festival de Cannes (13-24 May 2008).
Why? Because last year's 60th anniversary festival was rated by critics and professionals alike as a banner year in Cannes history. One that would be hard to beat by any stretch of the imagination. A milestone in Cannes history, if you will. True, a festival is only as good as the production year itself. But in world cinema there are other ways to smooth over the gaps in a lean season – like unveiling previously undiscovered vistas of cinema art that surface readily but need an astute scout to define talent and potential. In this regard, Cannes has the best crew of scouts on record. So if nothing of interest is found in any given year in traditional filmlands, all Thierry Frémaux has to do is to search other continents for new talent and thematic material. Thus, in the late 1990s tired European cinema gave way to vibrant Asian cinema. And this year, unless my hunch is far off the mark, Asian cinema is being nudged aside by Latin American film waves.
How did Thierry Frémaux's virgin year as festival chief fare? Several contrasting opinions have been offered in the press and media. Like: entries by auteur directors barely scored on the critics' lists in trade publications. Or: films about the mafia and prison life dominated. Further: the documentary film has found a permanent niche in the competition, including a first-time animated documentary. In general, Cannes 61 presented itself as a quite depressing mirror reflection of our present-day chaotic world.
Latino Cinema
The tone was set with the opening night film: Brazilian director Fernando Meireilles's Blindness (Brazil/USA/Canada/Japan), a weary claustrophobic futuristic tale set in a Guantánamo-like prison for an urban population afflicted by a plague that appears to be contagious. Based on Portuguese Nobel Prize winning author José Saramago's bestselling allegorical Essay on Blindness, the book is one of those high-water-marks in literature that proved too much for a movie straightjacket by an aspiring auteur reaching for the moon. It was followed on the next day by Pablo Trapero's impressive but rather heavy-handed Leonera (Lion's Den) (Argentina/Brazil/South Korea), a murder caper that finds an innocent pregnant woman sentenced to prison for apparently killing her lover. The compelling element in this rather familiar account is that actress Martina Gusman, the film's coproducer, was in fact pregnant, thus adding to the realism of a story that ends some years later with a contrived escape across the border with her infant son.
Two more Latin American entries by name directors drew mixed reactions from critics. Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas's Linha de passé (Passing Line – a soccer expression) (Brazil), a four-son family drama set in the teaming slums of Sao Paulo, reminded this reviewer of Visconti's masterful Rocco and His Brothers (Italy, 1960). A wandering episodic drama directed with an uncontrolled hand, it won a Best Actress Award for Sandra Corveloni, the long-suffering mother whose trouble-making brood stem partially from being offspring by different fathers. Also, Lucrecia Martel's La mujer sin cabeza (The Woman Without a Head) (Argentina/Spain/France/Italy), came across as a rambling go-nowhere portrait of a middle-aged woman-dentist who loses control of her sensory powers. We are made to believe that the memory loss – or better: fantasy delusion – was due to a head concussion suffered when her car hit an unseen object or person on the highway. Yet after her recovery, we still don't have a clue as to what is really going on in this obviously deranged woman's head.
If nothing else, however, these disappointing Latino entries whetted the appetite for Steven Soderbergh's Che (USA/Spain/France), a two-part, long awaited, four-and-a-half-hour epic on the life and times of Che Guevara, starring Benicio Del Toro in the role of the legendary revolutionary. Unfortunately, the film as it now stands has to be reedited to guarantee the success with audience and aficionados that the producers intended.One would think that this "hottest ticket in Cannes" would offer something new on the asthmatic revolutionary who had helped Castro to defeat Batista in Cuba (Part One, 1956-59) and then lost his way in the jungles of Bolivia (Part Two, 1966-67). But we scarcely perceive the real man behind Del Toro's acting façade. Even more puzzling for history buffs in the Cannes audience was why the reenacted visit of Che to the United Nations in 1964 had been included as a tie-together segment between the historical halves. Probably, contended an Argentinean colleague, it was there to underscore his intellectual acumen, particularly when Cold War journalists tried to bait him with loaded questions and "commy" accusations.
Auteur Cinema on the Decline
Day after day, one auteur director after another bit the dust at Cannes. For many in the press corps, Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Üç Maymun (Three Monkeys) (Turkey/France) was the frontrunner you had to beat for Palme d'Or laurels. Programmed early in the festival, his Three Monkeys prompted dozens of flattering interviews with the shy director (who seldom strays far from his home base in Istanbul) and his actress wife, Ebru Ceylan. On the surface, Three Monkeys – read: the "monkey metaphor" of hear-no-evil, see-no-evil, speak-no-evil – is little more than a family kammerspiel about human failings. But below the surface it also raises the philosophical question about how extravagant lies to cover up the truth can lead to tragic consequences. As strong as the direction is – Ceylan was awarded the Best Director at Cannes – what's lacking is his patented aching indictment of human failings that characterized his earlier films: Uzak (Distant) (2003), Grand Jury Prize at 2003 Cannes, and Iklimler (Climates), FIPRESCI Critics Prize at 2006 Cannes. Next time.
The same fate awaited Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's Le Silence de Lorna (Lorna's Silence) (Belgium/France/Italy/Germany), an engaging film but lacking the persuasive power of the Belgian brothers' previous Palme d'Or winners: Rosetta (1999) and L'Enfant (The Child) (2005). For Lorna's Silence, they return to an environment they know only too well from childhood: Liège. Here, an illegal Albanian immigrant – played by talented Kosovo actress Arta Dobroshi, who learned French to get the part – falls into the hands of a slick taxi-driver with mafia contacts in order to obtain Belgian citizenship. The marriage scheme begins with a junkie, who is expected to die of an overdose, so that Lorna can then marry a Russian mafia boss to enable the latter to obtain Belgian citizenship. But when her own unexpected pregnancy tips the apple-cart, and Lorna finds herself without a passport, the game becomes dangerous and the film ends in a no man's land. Lorna's Silence was awarded the consolation Best Screenplay Award.
Arnaud Desplechin may be one of the darlings of the new nouvelle vague (this is the fourth time he has competed for Palme d'Or laurels), but his Un Conte de Noel (A Christmas Tale) (France) has all the ear markings of a sentimental vehicle for the home audience. The giveaway is the footnote "Roubaix" found in the preproduction title – like the Dardenne brothers' Liège, this is where the director was born and raised. The setting of this two-and-a-half-hour, talking-head family drama is an estate in Roubaix, where a painful reunion takes place at Christmas that sparks animosity stemming from a family tragedy that had happened years before. Catherine Deneuve, as the ailing matriarch who needs a bone marrow transplant from one of her difficult offspring, was awarded the Special 60th Anniversary Prize.
Kornel Mundruczo's Delta was also favored for Cannes laurels, if only because his debut feature, Szep Napok (Pleasant Days) (2002), a grim look at small town mores, had won him a six-month stay for young filmmakers at the Cannes Residence Program in Paris. Moving up the Cannes ladder, his Johanna, presented in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2005 Cannes, drew high critical praise as a rare example of a film-oratorio. Delta, flooded with striking visual imagery of lush fauna in the Danube delta, was a standout at Cannes. The crippling element was the dilemma Mundruczo was forced to face when his leading actor (Lajos Bertok, to whom the film is dedicated) died in the middle of shooting – to be eventually replaced by a violin virtuoso, Felix Lajko, who also scored the film. Lajko, unfortunately, brings little up front to enhance this tragic tale of incest and retribution. Delta was awarded the FIPRESCI Critics Prize.
Atom Egoyan's Adoration (Canada/France) was a major disappointment at Cannes. Considering that this is the Armenian-Canadian director's tenth appearance at Cannes (including a stint as a member of the international jury), one would expect more maturity in his choice of thematic material. Instead, Adoration, a discourse on the chat phenomenon of the internet age, is drowned at the outset in film and video technology at its most fundamental high-school level. (Editor's note: The Award of the Ecumenical Jury for "Adoration" though demonstrates a different judgment). Wim Wenders's The Palermo Shooting (Germany/UK) is not much better – indeed, its negative reception at Cannes might signal the demise of auteur cinema as a reliable festival ethic in the years to come. What made matters particularly embarrassing – especially for die-hard WW fans – was his specious dedication of the film "to the memory of Ingmar and Antonioni" – as though Bergman and Antonioni might deign to shower their blessings upon the German director's fiasco.
The problem with Wenders's lackadaisical roadmovie, about a chic-fashion photographer (German rock star Campino) just a few steps ahead of "Death" (Dennis Hopper) on a trip from Germany to Sicily, is Wim's bullheaded, all-out commitment to creative improvisation. This time around – on his ninth visit to the Cannes competition that included a Palme d'Or for Paris, Texas (1984) – he has completely sabotaged his ingrained penchant for "free-wheeling film art". "Most stories are quite self-centered and have a tendency to push everything else aside," he once said in an interview in which he criticized narrative cinema. Now Wim is the victim of his own Wenders hubris.
Return of the Documentary
As the Cannes carousel rolled on, a pair of Italian docu-dramas on how the mafia has infiltrated the social fabric, to say nothing of having reached the higher echelons of political circles, won increasing accolades of praise – like the proverbial snowball rolling down a hill. For some critics, this apparent new wave of Italian mafia films heralded a revival of neorealist cinema. Programmed towards the middle of the festival, the most talked about film at Cannes was suddenly Matteo Garrone's Gomorrah (Gomorra) (Italy), awarded the runnerup Grand Jury Prize. Based on the non-fiction bestseller with the same title by Roberto Saviano, it deals with the inner workings of the Camorra mafia in Naples. According to one unofficial report, the worldwide earnings of the Camorra is estimated at well over $200 billion annually, with the income reaching from drugs and extortion to waste disposal and the haute culture fashion market. That alone makes Gomorra interesting, while the intertwining stories feature some bravura acting performances. The story of how a young delivery boy, longing to join the mafia, sets up a woman for execution at the hands of rival toughs is chilling for its authenticity. By the same token, Paolo Sorrentino's Il Divo (Italy/France), a portrait of former Christian Democrat Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti (brilliantly interpreted by Toni Servillo) is anything but flattering. Rather, Servillo's performance is peppered with such delightful moments of outrageous wit and humor that Andreotti comes across as a real-life, modern-day, double-dealing Machiavellian Prince – one who will stop at nothing to retain power, cost what it may. Il Divo was awarded the Special Jury Prize.
Unfortunately overlooked for a festival award, Ari Folman's animation-documentary Waltz with Bashir (Israel/France/Germany/USA) is the one film in the Cannes competition that you cannot easily forget – and this for any number of reasons. The traumatic journey of the filmmaker himself into his own past as a young soldier during the Lebanon Crisis, the story is told in hand-drawn comic-book fashion to capture the viewer's attention and to spotlight confessional reports by eyewitnesses on what really happened in June of 1982, when Israeli forces invaded Lebanon. As though to underscore Israeli complicity in the massacre of hundreds (estimated as high as 3,000) Palestinian civilians by Lebanese Phalangists in the Beirut refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, soldier-filmmaker Ari Folman shifts away from animation in the final scene to jarring actual documentary footage of the few survivors leaving the camps. As a statement of conscience and shame, guilt and expiation, Waltz with Bashir stands high on the list of the best antiwar films made. Was the international jury under Sean Penn sleeping?! Ari Folman certainly deserved some kind of citation.
Programmed in the final slot on the last day of competition, Laurent Cantet's Entre les murs (The Class) (France) was unanimously awarded the Palme d'Or. Surprising, too, was the fact that was Cantet's first visit to the Cannes competition. Based on an autobiographical bestseller by François Begaudeau, who plays the lead in this finely sketched story about 13- and 14-year-old students at a multi-cultural school in a tough Parisian neighborhood, The Class covers one year in a teacher's ordeal to instill a love for learning – along with a tolerance for discipline that makes learning possible in the first place. Call this fiction-documentary or docu-fiction, both are quite appropriate in this case – although, seen from a broader perspective, the film is entirely fictional from start to finish. The attraction is how Cantet and Begaudeau collaborated with screenwriter Robin Campillo to make the film in the first place. Throughout an entire school year in preparation for shooting the film, they ran a workshop for volunteer students between the ages of 13 to 16, allowing the kids to improvise their own roles as they went along. In the process, both the students and the three-man camera crew got to know each other, thus enabling a smooth working relationship when the final casting was made just days before the actual shooting began. Films like The Class come along only once in a while. It will be interesting to see how other would-be filmmakers fare when they try to imitate this lively, scintillating, cutting-edge classroom drama.
Official Competition Palme d'Or, Best Film Entre les murs (The Class) (France), dir Laurent Cantet Grand Prix Gomorra (Gomorrah) (Italy), dir Matteo Garrone Prix du Jury / Special Jury Prize Il Divo (Italy/France), dir Paolo Sorrentino Best Director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Uc Maymun (Three Monkeys) (Turkey/France) Best Actor Benicio Del Toro, Che (USA/France/Spain), dir Steven Soderbergh Best Actress Sandra Corveloni, Linha de passe (Passing Line) (Brazil/France), dir Walter Salles Best Screenplay Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Le Silence de Lorna (Lorna's Silence) (Belgium/France/Italy/Germany), dir Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne Special 60th Anniversary Prize Clint Eastwood, director/composer, Changeling (USA) Catherine Deneuve, actress, Un conte de Noel (A Christmas Tale) (France), dir Arnaud Desplechin
Palme d'Or, Best Short Film Megatron (Romania), dir Marian Crisan Special Mention Jerrycan (Australia), dir Julius Avery
Un Certain Regard Prize Tulpan (Kazakhstan/Russia/Poland/Germany), dir Sergei Dvortsevoy Jury Prize Tokyo Sonata (Japan), dir Kiyoshi Kurosawa KnockOut Prize Tyson (USA), James Toback Hope Prize Johnny Mad Dog (France/Belgium), dir Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire Prix Coup de Cœur Wolke 9 (Cloud 9) (Germany), dir Andreas Dresen
Caméra d'Or, Best First Film Hunger (Australia), dir Steve McQueen
FIPRESCI (International Film Critics) Awards Official Competition Delta (Hungary/Germany), dir Kornel Mundruczo Un Certain Regard Hunger (Australia), dir Steve McQueen International Critics Week and Directors Fortnight Eldorado (Belgium/France), dir Bouli Lanners – Directors Fortnight
Ecumenical Jury Prize Adoration (Canada/France), dir Atom Egoyan
Directors Fortnight Prix Regards Jeunes / Young Eyes Prize Eldorado (Belgium/France), dir Bouli Lanners Label Europa Cinéma Prize (Best European Film) Eldorado (Belgium/France), dir Bouli Lanners CICAE Prix Art et Essai Slepe lasky (Blind Loves) (Slovakia), dir Juraj Lehotsky SACD – French Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers Les Bureaux de Dieu (God's Offices) (France), dir Claire Simon "Un Regard Neuf" Short Film Prize Muro (Brazil), dir Tiao.
International Critics Week Grand Prize Snijeg (Snow) (Bosnia-Herzegovia/Germany/France/Iran), dir Aida Begic SACD – French Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers Best Screenwriter Jean-Claude Van Rijckeghem et Pat Van Beirs, Aanrijding in Moscou (Moscow, Belgium) (Belgium), dir Christophe Van Rompaey ACID/CCAS Support Award Aanrijding in Moscou (Moscow, Belgium) (Belgium), dir Christophe Van Rompaey OFAJ/TV5MONDE (VERY) Young Critic Award La Sangre Brota (Blood Appears) (Argentine/France/Germany), dir Pablo Fendrik Canal + Grand Prize for Best Short Film Next Floor (Canada), dir Denis Villeneuve Kodak Discovery Award for Best Short Film Skhizein (France), dir Jérémy Clapin
Regards Jeunes Prizes Eldorado (Belgiim/France), dir Bouli Lanners – Directors Fortnight Vse umrut a ja ostqanus (Everybody Dies Except Me) (Russia), dir Valeria Gaï Guermanika – International Critics Week.
Prix de la Jeunesse (Youth Prize) Tulpan (Kazakhstan/Russia/Poland/Germany), dir Sergei Dvortsevoy – Un Certain Regard
Prix Radio France-Culture for Career Achievement Sandrine Bonnaire, actress-director.
La Cinéfondation Awards First Prize Anthem (Israel), dir Elad Keidan Second Prize Forbach (France), dir Claire Burger, France Third Prize (ex aequo) Stop ((South Korea), dir Park Jae-ok Roadmarkers (Finland), dir Juho Kuosmanen
(Extraits)
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