Cannes’ jury president, Park Chan-wook — long a Cannes favorite, never a Palme winner — managed to roast himself and plug his latest movie at the closing press conference of the 79th Cannes Film Festival.
Park quipped that he struggled with the decision of which film should take this year’s top 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.
Despite his joke, the jury did deliver 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 high point of the presser was Park’s addressing the jury’s refusal to pick favorites in two categories, handing out shared honors for both acting (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 said. 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 two U.S. Competition titles, James Gray’s “Paper Tiger” and Ira Sachs’ “The Man I Love,” both left empty-hand in a year that championed European movies all the way.
Park is the influential helmer behind 2000’s “Job Security Area” and 2003’s “Oldboy” and many other films out of his native Korea. In recent years his profile has climbed in Hollywood with such projects as the HBO limited series “The Sympathizer,” starring Robert Downey Jr., and the 2025 drama “No Other Choice,” which had a strong arthouse run last year in the U.S. via distributor Neon.
Park Chan-wook’s films are no stranger to the festival. He most recently had a film in competition in 2016 with “The Handmaiden.” He also served as a jury member for the 2017 Cannes Film Festival.
(Pictured top: Cannes jury members Ruth Negga, Park Chan-wook, Demi Moore and Isaach de Bankolé)
