Cannes ended with a bang – between the second ever instance of a woman director winning the top director prize (it’s about time), controversy over Netflix and a big upset, nobody puts the historic film festival in a corner. Sofia Coppola won the prize for Best Director for her remake of The Beguiled starring Nicole Kidman, Kristen Dunst, and Colin Farrell.
Everyone was talking about the graphic sex scenes featured in L’Amant Double and how surprised they were that Ruben Östlund’s The Square won the coveted Palme d’Or, completely beating the odds. Game changer Netflix has caused controversy. Though the streaming service won no prizes and left the festival with no trophies for their showings of Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Stories nor for Okia, they have certainly left a discussion about the future of film, streaming, and the pertinence (or lack of) having a big screen in order to view cinema. As none of the Netflix features mentioned have had a theatrical release in France, perhaps this was the only year Netflix will even bother showing up in following years as the jury awarding prizes has been critical of films not released theatrically but rather on dim laptop screens at 2am. Hey, something has got to give…
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