Cristian Mungiu's 'Fjord' wins Palme d'Or at Cannes Film Festival

In a squeaker contention for Cannes’ apical prize, Romanian manager Cristian Mungiu prevailed connected Saturday, taking the Palme d’Or for his tense assemblage play “Fjord.”

The movie, a wide admired conversation-starter astatine the festival, stars Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve arsenic spiritual parents who travel into struggle with the kid extortion services of their tiny Norwegian municipality wherever they person relocated with their family.

Mungiu, a erstwhile victor of the Palme for his arguable 2007 termination play “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” present joins an exclusive radical of 10 filmmakers who person won the Palme doubly — an accomplishment shared by Francis Ford Coppola (1974’s “The Conversation” and 1979’s “Apocalypse Now”) and Ruben Östlund (2017’s “The Square” and 2022’s “Triangle of Sadness”), among others. No 1 has ever won a 3rd Palme d’Or.

Another record, possibly adjacent much impressive, was acceptable by distributor Neon, which, with “Fjord,” extends its streak of Palme wins to an unprecedented 7 successful a row. Those erstwhile six Neon winners, galore of which yet claimed Oscars, are “Parasite,” “Titane,” “Triangle of Sadness,” “Anatomy of a Fall,” “Anora” and past year’s “It Was Just an Accident.”

Neon volition merchandise “Fjord” successful the fall, with an extended awards run to follow.

This year’s nine-member main contention jury, led by Korean manager Park Chan-wook and studded with notables including “The Substance” prima Demi Moore, Stellan Skarsgård and “Hamnet” manager Chloé Zhao, seemed intent connected spreading the wealthiness among arsenic galore winners arsenic possible. There were 3 ties astatine Saturday’s awards ceremony.

The grant for histrion was shared by Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto, co-stars of Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “All of a Sudden,” a movie pegged by galore to perchance spell each the way. Similarly, the prize for histrion was bestowed connected some Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne, co-stars of Lukas Dhont’s World War I romanticist play “Coward.”

The prize for directing went to 3 radical — and 2 movies — with a associated triumph for Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi (better known arsenic Los Javis) for their century-spanning queer humanities play “The Black Ball,” arsenic good arsenic to manager Paweł Pawlikowski for his exquisite post-World War II psychodrama “Fatherland.” (Pawlikowski half-joked astatine the podium, “This was a disastrous portion of mise-en-scène” aft the awkward grant presumption had him waiting successful the wings.)

Claiming this year’s Grand Prize (essentially 2nd place) was “Minotaur,” the rapturously received comeback movie of Andrey Zvyagintsev, a Russian manager who had been sidelined with a near-fatal bout of agelong COVID that enactment him successful a coma. His caller movie, astir a affluent Moscow family, is some an erotic thriller and an indictment of amoral oligarchy detached from the warfare with Ukraine.

The festival’s third-place Jury Prize went to the borderland German play “The Dreamed Adventure,” directed by Valeska Grisebach.