2025 Un Certain Regard Winners: ‘The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo,’ ‘Urchin’ and More – Cannes
The 1980s Chilean AIDS surrealist drama The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo has won the top award from the Un Certain Regard section of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.
A first film from director Diego Céspedes, the story follows Lidia, the only girl in her village who all believe that gay men transmit a mysterious disease through their eyes.
Simón Mesa Soto’s black comedy A Poet was the Jury Prize winner for its story of an aging poet finds purpose mentoring a talented teen.
Harry Lighton’s romantic gay BDSM comedy/drama Pillion, an audience favorite of the festival, won the screenplay award. The film stars Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling as an unlikely dom/sub duo.
Palestinian twin brothers Tarzan and Arab Nasser were the Best Director winners for their film Once Upon a Time in Gaza, a story of two young men resorting to drug peddling to get by on the Gaza Strip in 2007.
Sharing the Best Performance were Cléo Diara for I Only Rest in the Storm and Frank Dillane for Harris Dickinson’s directorial debut Urchin.
The 2025 selection included 20 feature films – 9 of which are first features also competing for the Caméra d’or.
Chaired by British director, screenwriter and cinematographer Molly Manning Walker, the Jury included French-Swiss director and screenwriter Louise Courvoisier, Croatian director of the International Film Festival Rotterdam Vanja Kaludjercic, Italian director, producer and screenwriter Roberto Minervini and Argentinian actor Nahuel Pérez Biscayart.
Here is the complete list of winners.
Prix Un Certain Regard: 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 Actor: Frank Dillane, Urchin
Best Actress: Cléo Diara, I Only Rest in the Storm
Best Screenplay: Harry Lighton, Pillion
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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