68th Cannes Film Festival Winners: Dheepan takes the Palme, Rooney Mara ties in Best Actress

Erik Anderson May 23, 2015

In what many consider a ‘long overdue’ win, Jaques Audiard has won the 2015 Palme d’Or for his film Dheepan, an intimate story of Sri Lankan refugees in Paris. “Thank you, Michael Haneke, for not making a film this year,” Audiard said as he accepted the Palme. The film, which was one of the more quietly received films at the festival, beat out higher profile films for the top prize, including Carol, Son of Saul, Youth and Mountains May Depart. Only the last two of those went home empty-handed, however. Carol managed a win in the Best Actress tie between Rooney Mara and Mon Roi’s Emmanuelle Bercot. Director Todd Haynes accepted on Mara’s behalf, who was not present at the festival. “She would be so completely blown away by this prize,” he said. “I’m just so proud of her work, I’m so privileged to have worked with Rooney. Rooney, I love you, I wish you were here.”

Son of Saul won the Grand Prix and Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s exceptional direction won him the Director prize for his martial arts epic The Assassin. A very moved Vincent Lindon accepted his Best Actor prize for The Measure of a Man saying, “I have never won a prize before.”

Full list of winners

COMPETITION

Palme d’Or – Golden Palm – Jaques Audiard for DHEEPAN
Grand Prix – Grand Prize of the Festival – Lazlo Nemes for SON OF SAUL
Prix du Jury – Jury Prize – Yorgos Lanthimos for THE LOBSTER
Palme d’Or du court métrage – Best Short Film – Ely Dagher for WAVES ’98
Prix d’interprétation féminine – Best Actress – Rooney Mara for CAROL and Emmanuelle Bercot for MON ROI
Prix d’interprétation masculine – Best Actor – Vincent Lindon for THE MEASURE OF A MAN
Prix de la mise en scène – Best Director – Hou Hsiao-Hsien for THE ASSASSIN
Prix du scénario – Best Screenplay – Michel Franco for CHRONIC

Caméra d’Or – Best first feature film – Cesar Acevedo for La Tierra Y La Sombra

Watch the live-stream ceremonies right here:

http://www.canalplus.fr/pid3580-c-live-tv-clair.html

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FIPRESCI (International Critics Prize)

Son of Saul (Competition)
This Holocaust drama from director Lazlo Nemes garnered raves and standing ovations and tells the story of Jewish prisoners forced to help their Nazi captors in concentration camps. It is Nemes’ first film.

Masaan (Un Certain Regard)
Four lives intersect in this Indian drama about moral traditions and the caste society that dictates them. It comes from director Neeraj Gaywan.

Paulina (Critics’ Week)
This drama from Santiago Mitre stars Dolores Fonzi as a lawyer who leaves her job to teach Argentinian children only to be viciously attacked.

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UN CERTAIN REGARD

The Icelandic film Rams has won the Un Certain Regard’s top prize. The film, directed by Grímur Hákonarson, details the two farming brothers who live and work side by side despite not having spoken to each other in over 40 years.

Jury president Isabella Rossellini said watching 19 films from 21 countries “was like taking a flight over our planet and its inhabitants… Any anthropologist would be envious of us.” She added, “I cannot refrain from expressing also my personal gratitude to the Festival for having chosen my mother Ingrid Bergman for the poster of the 68th edition of this festival. Mamma seems to have hovered over all of us, filmmakers and film lovers, as a guardian angel.”

Other members of the Un Certain Regard jury were Saudi Arabian filmmaker Haifaa al-Mansour, Greek director Panos H. Koutras, Lebanese actress/director Nadine Labaki and French actor Tahar Rahim.

The Jury Prize went to The High Sun (Zvizdan) by Dalibor Matanić. The film follows two love stories over three decades in the Balkans.

Best Director for awarded to Kiyoshi Kurosawa for Journey To The Shore (Kishibe No Tabi), a film about a Japanese piano teacher’s husband who dies at sea but then returns as a ghost.

The Un Certain Talent Prize was given to Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu’s Treasure (Comoara), a tale of a hunt for buried treasure.

Finally, the UCR’s Promising Future Prizes were given in a tie to Neeraj Ghaywan’s Indian drama Masaan, which was also a FIPRESCI winner today, and Ida Panahandeh’s Nahid from Iran.

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QUEER PALM

Todd Haynes’s Carol has won the 2015 Queer Palm. Previous winners here were:

2010: Kaboom
2011: Beauty
2012: Laurence Anyways
2013: Stranger by the Lake
2014: Pride

Stay tuned for Cannes prize updates including the Palme d’Or and more this weekend.

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.