The 64th Cannes Film Festival was hailed as one of the best in years. US cult director Terence Malick won the Palme d'or for his existential epic Tree of Life. Lars von Trier's Melancholia and Aki Kaurismäki's Le Havre also picked up awards - respectively Best Actress to Kirsten Dunst and FIPRESCI international critics' award. The Cannes jury, under Robert de Niro's aegis, gave the Best Director award to Denmark's Nicolas Winding Refn (photo) for his US road movie Drive.
The Kirsten Dunst accolade was the third Best Actress award in Cannes to a von Trier movie, after Charlotte Gainsbourg's win for Antichrist in 2009 and Björk's in 2000 for the Palme d'or winning Dancer in the Dark. By rewarding the US actress the 2011 Cannes jury clearly chose to brush away von Trier's ill-judged joke about being a Nazi at the Melancholia press conference and to refocus people's attention on his work. Produced by Zentropa, Melancholia opened this week in Scandinavia, released by Nordisk Film.
A surprise entry in Cannes' official competition, Refn's US action film Drive starring Ryan Gosling was mentioned by several Cannes attendants as ‘one of the most entertaining films of the festival.' The director of the Pusher trilogy will now be able to build on his Cannes award to boost his profile as one of Denmark's most internationally established directors. Refn and his producer Lene Børglum are already working on his upcoming Danish production Only God Forgives starring Kristin Scott Thomas and Luke Evans.
The French speaking film Le Havre by Finnish star director Aki Kaurismäki about a shoe shiner sheltering an African immigrant child was perhaps the most politically-oriented film of the competition but also one of the most crowd-pleasing screen experiences. Among the other Cannes entries, Norway's Oslo, August 31 by Joachim Trier and the Icelandic Volcano by Rúnar Rúnarsson received very positive reviews from Cannes critics, and Ruben Östlund's Swedish Play was chosen as the Directors' Fortnight's ‘Special pick' (Coup de coeur). The three films were supported by Nordisk Film & TV Fond.