Cannes’ jury president, Park Chan-wook — lengthy a Cannes favourite, by no means a Palme winner — managed to roast himself and plug his newest film on the closing press convention of the 79th Cannes Film Festival.
Park quipped that he struggled with the choice of which movie ought to take this 12 months’s prime award.
“To be completely honest, I didn’t want to award the Palme d’Or to any of the films because it’s an award that I myself have never gotten. But I had no other choice,” Park Chan-wook deadpanned.
Regardless of his joke, the jury did ship a verdict. The Palme d’Or went to Cristian Mungiu‘s complex moral drama “Fjord,” starring Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve. This makes the Romanian writer-director the tenth filmmaker to win the coveted award twice — 19 years after his first victory for “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.”
The excessive level of the presser was Park’s addressing the jury’s refusal to select favorites in two classes, handing out shared honors for each performing (for Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto in Ryusuke Hamaguchi “All of a Sudden”) and directing (for Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski with “Fatherland,” and Spanish duo Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi with “The Black Ball”) — and Park wasn’t about to apologize for it.
“If you have seen the two films that were awarded the acting award, I’m certain you’d have to agree with our choices,” he stated. On the directing tie, he doubled down: “To emphasize this again, both filmmakers did an amazing job, and we just couldn’t decide if one was better than the other.”
Park presided over a jury that included Demi Moore, Ruth Negga, Laura Wandel, Chloé Zhao, Diego Céspedes, Isaach De Bankolé, Paul Laverty and Stellan Skarsgård.
The 2 U.S. Competitors titles, James Grey’s “Paper Tiger” and Ira Sachs’ “The Man I Love,” each left empty-hand in a 12 months that championed European films all the best way.
Park is the influential helmer behind 2000’s “Job Security Area” and 2003’s “Oldboy” and plenty of different movies out of his native Korea. Lately his profile has climbed in Hollywood with such tasks because the HBO restricted sequence “The Sympathizer,” starring Robert Downey Jr., and the 2025 drama “No Other Choice,” which had a powerful arthouse run final 12 months within the U.S. through distributor Neon.
Park Chan-wook’s movies aren’t any stranger to the competition. He most lately had a movie in competitors in 2016 with “The Handmaiden.” He additionally served as a jury member for the 2017 Cannes Movie Pageant.
(Pictured prime: Cannes jury members Ruth Negga, Park Chan-wook, Demi Moore and Isaach de Bankolé)
