As the 79th Cannes Film Festival sprints toward its closing weekend, Day 11’s top headlines belonged to Un Certain Regard, which announced its winners slates with some surprise snubs. Here’s a recap of the latest news.
Un Certain Regard unveils winners list!
The buzz around this year’s Un Certain Regard portion of the festival focused on two American offerings: the opening film, Jane Schoenbrun’s meta horror flick Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, starring Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson, and Jordan Firstmann’s touching dramedy Club Kid. However, the jury — led by French actress Leïla Bekhti alongside Angèle Diabang, Khaled Mouzanar, Laura Samani, and Thomas Cailley — had other thoughts when it came to handing out the awards on Friday.
Sandra Wollner’s Everytime received the top honor, the Un Certain Regard Prize, while Abinash Bikram Shah’s Elephants in the Fog secured the Jury Prize. Rounding out the major wins, Louis Clichy’s animated Iron Boy took home the Special Jury Prize, Bradley Fiomona Dembeasset nabbed Best Actor for Congo Boy, and the trio of Marina de Tavira, Daniela Marín Navarro, and Mariangel Villegas shared Best Actress honors for their work in Siempre Soy Tu Animal Materno.
But the American films didn’t get completely blanked. Camp Miasma received the independently award Queer Palm, while Club Kid was the subject of the festival’s most heated bidding war, selling to A24 for $17 million.
Big ovation, mixed reviews for Coward
Lukas Dhont’s World War I drama Coward made a major splash at Cannes on Thursday night, earning a 13-minute standing ovation following its world premiere — one of the biggest audience responses so far. The queer romantic drama centers on Pierre, a soldier newly arrived at the front lines, who connects with Francis while helping organize a theater show intended to lift the troops’ spirits.
But while the reception inside the Palais was enthusiastic, critics were divided. Variety’s Guy Lodge praised Dhont for “gracefully finding love in the most hopeless of places,” adding that the director “finds fertile new ground for his interest in imperiled queer identity and masculinity in crisis.” IndieWire was more measured, calling the film “a lovely, if rather decorous and reverent, tale of an illicit affair” and arguing that “as a war movie, Coward isn’t especially unique. Nor is it as a queer romance. But how many straight wartime love stories have we seen?” Meanwhile, David Rooney at The Hollywood Reporter was less impressed, writing, “But what really sinks Coward is the self-conscious grandiosity with which the director strains for lofty emotional peaks in moments that instead come off as hollow and artificial.”
Sony ponies up
Sony Pictures Classics made some moves in the waning days of the fest. The specialty label acquired the rights to Iron Boy, Louis Clichy’s hand-painted animated feature from Un Certain Regard, and snapped up rights to Rehearsals for a Revolution, which took home Cannes’ prestigious top documentary prize, the L’Oeil d’Or. Premiering in the Special Screenings section, the debut documentary feature from Pegah Ahangarani retraces more than four decades of Iranian history.
amfAR gala raises $20 Million
The stars came out to celebrate and raise funds at the most glamorous annual event on the Croisette: the 32nd amfAR Gala. Held at the lavish Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc, the black-tie evening was packed with designer gowns and plenty of champagne, featuring performances by Lizzo, Robbie Williams, and Zara Larsson.
Hosted by Oscar winner Geena Davis, guests like Eva Longoria and Heidi Klum helped auction off luxury items to raise funds for HIV/AIDS research. Also in attendance was Rami Malek, who was in town for the world premiere of his Cannes competition film, The Man I Love, an intimate drama in which he plays a man living with HIV/AIDS in 1980s New York. The event brought in a whopping $20 million.
Updated Standing-O Scoreboard
| Film | Length of ovation* |
| The Black Ball (La Bola Negra) | 17.5 |
| Coward | 13 |
| Fjord | 10 |
| Garance | 10 |
| All of a Sudden | 9 |
| Minotaur | 9 |
| Paper Tiger | 9 |
| The Man I Love | 9 |
| Her Private Hell | 8.5 |
| The Beloved | 7 |
| Bitter Christmas | 7 |
| Club Kid | 7 |
| Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma | 7 |
| Hope | 6.5 |
| Dernsie: The Amazing Life of Bruce Dern | 6 |
| Parallel Tales | 6 |
| Victorian Psycho | 6 |
| Ashes | 5 |
| Fatherland | 5 |
| Full Phil | 5 |
| Sheep in the Box | 3.5 |
*averaged from published reports
