Cannes Film Festival 2005 Winners
May 21st, 2005 by Andre Soares
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s Belgian film L’Enfant / The Child, the story of a petty crook (Jérémie Renier) who suddenly takes up the responsibilities of fatherhood, won the Palme d’Or at Cannes on Saturday. The Dardenne brothers had already taken home a Palme d’Or back in 1999 for their teen drama Rosetta.
The secondary (and misnamed) Grand Prix was awarded to American filmmaker Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers, the tale of a perennial bachelor (Bill Murray) who sets out to meet a young man who may be his son.
Best director honors went to Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke, for his well-received, (mostly) French-made socio-psychological thriller Hidden, starring Juliette Binoche and Daniel Auteuil as a couple menaced by a video stalker.
American actor-turned-director Tommy Lee Jones was chosen best actor for his portrayal of a tough Texas ranch worker in Jones’s own directorial début, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, while Israeli actress Hanna Laszlo won as best actress for playing a cabdriver in Amos Gitaï’s road movie Free Zone.
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada also won Guillermo Arriaga an award for best screenplay.
The jury prize went to Chinese director Wang Xiaoshuai’s Qing hong / Shanghai Dreams, a love story set among workers who relocated to a remote part of China during the 1960s.
The award for best film by a first-time director was shared by U.S. filmmaker Miranda July for Me and You and Everyone We Know and Sri Lanka’s Vimukthi Jayasundara for Sulanga Enu Pinisa / La Terre abandonnée / The Forsaken Land.
Surprisingly, Carlos Reygadas’s controversial Mexican drama Batalla en el cielo / Battle in Heaven failed to win a single top award.
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