CANNES — The 76th Cannes Film Festival ended on Saturday with a courtroom drama at the summit. Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall” won the Palme d’Or, making the 44-year-old French director only the third woman to take the festival’s top prize, after Jane Campion in 1993 and Julia Ducournau two years ago.
The film stars Sandra Hüller as a novelist on trial for the murder of her husband, who has fallen from the attic window of their Alpine chalet; the only witness is the couple’s visually impaired son. Part procedural, part autopsy of a marriage, it had been the critical favourite of the competition from its first screening.
Triet used her acceptance speech to attack the French government’s handling of this spring’s pension protests, saying the country had been shaken by demonstrations that were denied and repressed in a shocking way. The remarks drew applause in the Palais and, by Sunday, irritation from the culture minister in Paris.
Elsewhere, the jury led by Ruben Östlund gave the Grand Prix to Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest”, an austere Holocaust drama set just outside Auschwitz, and best actress to Merve Dizdar of Turkey. Hüller, whose performance dominated the festival conversation, went home without an award — the night’s one true surprise.
Cannes has now crowned women three times in four editions. A festival long accused of inhospitality to female directors is changing, slowly, from the top step of its red carpet.
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