Second Palme d'Or for Cristian Mungiu and award for the Lorcan epic of the Javis

Special correspondent to the Cannes Film FestivalCristian Mungiu joins the exclusive list of filmmakers with two Palme d'Or awards. Nineteen years after winning the first with Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days, the Romanian filmmaker has once again triumphed at the Cannes Film Festival with Fjord, where he abandons his native Romania to travel to Norway and recount the drama of an evangelical and ultra-conservative Romanian family whose children are taken away by the progressive Norwegian social services when they discover that the father –Sebastian Stan, who reprises his native Romanian here– physically punishes them.

Fjord is an uncomfortable and ambiguous film in which Mungiu seeks to highlight the contradictions of European societies through the conflict between two opposing value systems and adopts the point of view that, in principle, should be furthest from him: that of the family that plans the education of their children with the study of the Bible as a guiding principle and, therefore, no mobile phones or television and some spanking on the bottom when they misbehave. A rigid but affectionate and very close-knit family on whom the officials of the very liberal Norway cannot help but project their prejudices about religious education. The film invites debate without establishing a single truth and explores the fit of conservative communities in secular and progressive societies, avoiding Manichaeism. However, an award for best screenplay would have been a more fitting recognition.

The Javis, hit the ground running

for his Lorquian booklet of stories about gay love for their Lorca-esque triptych of stories about gay love La bola negra, ex aequo with the historical drama Fatherland, by Pawel Pawlikowski, about Thomas Mann's return to Germany after World War II. The Javis' award, which equals Sirat's feat of entering the official competition's awards at Cannes, has a double merit because it is the filmmakers' first participation in the festival, unlike authors like Oliver Laxe or Albert Serra who, before entering the competition, passed through other parallel sections.

In just 13 years, the Javis have gone from premiering an underground musical in the lobby of the Teatro Lara in Madrid to receiving a historic award for Spanish cinema at the Cannes Film Festival, with the achievement of having placed three films in this edition's competition. A praiseworthy leap in scale that they have made with ideological coherence and retaining their personality, although in La bola negra

the ambition to reach a territory of prestige through the codes of cinema that unite a public vocation and cultural relevance is very evident.

In fact, apart from a fascinating flamenco number and some images that explore the homoeroticism of military life in the style of Claire Denis's Beau travail

, the film's narrative seeks the epic of forbidden love through rather conventional dramatic and aesthetic resources that do not justify recognition of this dimension at Cannes, especially when it is shared with Pawel Pawlikowski, who in Fatherland delivers an extraordinary staging. Be that as it may, the film is a phenomenon and the international critical reception predicts the film's presence in next year's Oscar race, especially for Penélope Cruz, acclaimed for her brief but intense participation as a cabaret artist.

The acquisition of the rights to The Black Ball in the United States by Netflix only paves the way for its nomination. Regarding the agreement with the platform, Calvo and Ambrossi have announced to the Spanish press that Netflix will premiere the film first in cinemas, with a 45-day exclusive window in theaters. The directors, who last year ceased to be a romantic couple, have assured that they will continue to form an artistic tandem and that they already know what their new project will be. "And it will be in English and Spanish – Calvo revealed –. We believe the time has come".

The miracle of Zvyagintsev

The other big news of the awards is the Grand Jury Prize for Andrei Zviaguintsev. Just five years ago, the Russian filmmaker had a particularly severe case of covid and an extreme reaction to the Russian Sputnik vaccine that led him to be in a coma for 40 days. Zviaguintsev, unable to move or feed himself, spent a year recovering in Germany. When he left the hospital, he was in a wheelchair and didn't know if he would be able to direct again. That's why the award he has received for his new film, Minotaur, has a taste of miracle.

In the film, which freely adapts Claude Chabrol's The Unfaithful Woman, Zviaguintsev relentlessly dissects Putin's Russia – although filmed in Latvia, as Zviaguintsev has exiled himself to France – through the portrait of a businessman from a provincial town very close to the regime, to the point of deceiving his workers and sending them to the Ukrainian front to please the authorities. The banality of evil is embodied in this servile and mediocre man whose attractive wife cheats on him, a character-metaphor for a Russia in moral bankruptcy, dehumanized and corrupt.

Another gay melodrama in wartime like

The Black Ball, Lukas Dhont's sensitive Coward

, was awarded for the delicate work of its two protagonists, the young Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne. And the French director Emmanuel Marre took home the award for best screenplay for his magnificent portrait in Our Health of his great-grandfather, a member of the Vichy collaborationist government and a complex and contradictory character. The special jury prize went to the excellent The Dreamed Adventure by German filmmaker Valeska Grisebach, a kind of criminal intrigue that excavates the social structures of a small Bulgarian village where social structures dominated by toxic masculinity are perpetuated.

The award for best actress also went ex aequo to the two actresses from Suddenly,

the French Virginie Efira and the Japanese Tao Okamoto. Although deserved – each had to learn the other's language – it is still an insufficient recognition for the monumental film by the Japanese Ryusuke Hamaguchi; the best that has been screened in this edition.

As had already been announced, Barbra Streisand could not travel to Cannes on her doctor's recommendation and, therefore, could not attend the festival's closing ceremony to receive her honorary Palme d'Or, which was accepted on her behalf by Isabelle Huppert, who was generous in her praise for the American actress and singer, and who sent a video of thanks to the festival.