Un Certain Regard, the second most prestigious section at the Cannes Film Festival, has brought arguably the event’s biggest surprise hit this year.
Jordan Firstman’s directorial debut “Club Kid,” which played to thunderous applause on the first Friday of the festival, was acquired by a whopping $17 million by A24 after a multiple-bidder race that remains the biggest sell of the festival so far.
The wide acclaim for a film Variety chief film critic Guy Lodge called a “sweet, surprisingly old-fashioned heartwarmer,” however, did not translate into awards, with Firstman going home with full pockets but empty hands.
The big winner of the night was Sandra Wollner’s “Everytime,” a gripping tale on grief told through a tragedy uniting a mother, daughter, and teenage boy.
The Austrian director took to the stage to thank her team of contributors, many fellow writers and directors themselves, and to tell the audience she would like to “hold on to those quirky and weird thoughts” that creatives often tend to ignore in their initial senselessness, but that “hopefully stay with you a little longer.”
Other winners included Abinash Bikram Shah’s “Elephants in the Fog,” the first Nepali film in Cannes Un Certain Regard, and Louis Clichy’s “Iron Boy,” a hand-painted animated feature acquired earlier in the week by Sony Pictures Classics for North and Latin America, India, and Southeast Asian TV.
Visibly moved, the “Elephants in the Fog” director Bikram Shah told the audience that “cinema has a power to look into the shadows.”
“By bringing our story [to the festival] and recognizing it with this award,” he told the jury, “you have made the invisible visible.”
Performance-wise, the UCR jury awarded the female trio at the centre of Valentina Maurel’s “Forever Your Maternal Animal” — Daniela Marín Navarro, Marina de Tavira and Mariangel Villegas — and Bradley Fiomona Dembeasset’s breakout turn in Rafiki Fariala’s “Congo Boy.”
“Forever Your Maternal Animal” was Costa Rica’s first film in Un Certain Regard.
Director Maurel told Variety before Cannes that she hoped that the selection of her film signalled a broadening of space for Latin American filmmakers at major festivals, particularly for female directors.
This year’s Un Certain Regard jury was presided over by French actress Leila Bekhti, who first rose to prominence through Jacques Audiard’s Cannes Grand Prize-winning “A Prophet”.
Bekthi was joined by French director Thomas Cailley, whose “Animal Kingdom” opened UCR in 2023, plus Senegalese producer Angele Diabang, Italian director Laura Samani, and Lebanese composer Khaled Mouzanar.
Here is the full list of winners:
Prix Un Certain Regard: “Everytime,” by Sandra Wollner
Jury Prize: “Elephants in the Fog,” by Abinash Bikram Shah
Special Jury Prize: “Iron Boy,” directed by Louis Clichy
Best Actress: Daniela Marín Navarro, Marina de Tavira and Mariangel Villegas for “Forever Your Maternal Animal”
Best Actor: Bradley Fiomona Dembeasset for “Congo Boy”
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