2025 Cannes Critics Week Winners: ‘A Useful Ghost,’ ‘Left-Handed Girl’
Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s A Useful Ghost, a fable about a man who discovers his wife has been reincarnated in their vacuum cleaner, has won the Critics Week’s Grand Prize of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.
In his review of the film, Alistair Ryder said “A Useful Ghost has the same uncanny relationship between fables and the mundane present day as the films of fellow countryman Apichatpong Weerasethakul, another director who often uses mythical tales rooted in his country’s rich folklore as a jumping off point for wider explorations of sexuality and queerness.”
The jury, presided over by Rodrigo Sorogoyen and featuring Jihane Bougrine, Josée Deshaies, Yulina Evina Bhara and Daniel Kaluuya, called it a “bold, free and unclassifiable work. A first feature that plays with genres, bends the rules, and offers a vision that is both intimate and universal.”
The Louis Roederer Foundation Rising Star Award went to Théodore Pellerin for Nino by Pauline Loquès.
“This actor never overplayed his hand, never overwhelmed the stage,” said the jurors, noting he embodied his character with “depth, vulnerability and density that went beyond what was written. Nothing was forced. No word sounded false. Everything seemed real, lived through, experienced,” they said, continuing with praising “rare harmony between an actor, a role and a director.”
Left-Handed Girl by Shih-Ching Tsou, was awarded the Gan Foundation Award for Distribution. The film was co-written, co-edited and co-produced by last year’s Palme d’Or winner – and four-time Oscar winner – Sean Baker. The film, about a single mother and her two daughters who return to Taipei to open a stand at a night market, remains up for grabs.
Here is the full list of winners.
Grand Prize
A Useful Ghost by Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke
French Touch Prize of the Jury
Imago by Déni Oumar Pitsaev
Louis Roederer Foundation Rising Star Award
Théodore Pellerin for Nino by Pauline Loquès
Leitz Cine Discovery Prize for Short Film
L’mina by Randa Maroufi
Awards given by partners
Gan Foundation Award for Distribution
Le Pacte, French distributor for Left-Handed Girl by Shih-Ching Tsou
SACD Award
Guillermo Galoe and Victor Alonso-Berbel, authors of Sleepless City
Canal+ Award for Short Film
Erogenesis de Xandra Popescu
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), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) 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.
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