French director Justine Triet won the Palme d’Or on Saturday for her film Anatomy of a Fall. She is the third female director to win the top award at the Cannes Film Festival. The Grand Prix of the festival went to Jonathan Glazer for The Zone of Interest.
Leading actor Sandra Hüller is in the French-language court drama Anatomie d’une chute a successful writer trying to prove her own innocence in her husband’s death. “One of the most intimate films I have ever made,” Triet called her work. “Closest to myself.”
Read also this interview with Justine Triet from 2020: “Very sometimes I act like a tyrant”
On stage in Cannes, Triet drew attention to the major protests that have raged in France against the pension reform in recent months. “The protests have been suppressed in a shocking way,” she said, drawing a link between the government’s course and the French film industry. “Commercialisation, defended by the liberal government, detracts from the exceptional position of the cultural sector. Without that exceptional position I would not have been here today.”
Culture minister ‘stunned’
Triet dedicated her award to “all young female and male directors, and all people who cannot make films today. We have to give them space, the space I was given fifteen years ago in a less hostile world where it was still possible to make mistakes and start over.”
“Stunned by this unjust speech,” Rima Abdul Malak, the French culture minister, responds via Twitter to Triet’s comments. “This film would never have seen the light of day without our French model of film financing, which allows for a unique diversity. Let’s not forget that.”
Read also In Cannes, Sandra Hüller is the queen of the red carpet