Türkiye’s Merve Dizdar wins best actress at Cannes

CANNES

Turkish actress Merve Dizdar won best actress at the Cannes Film Festival on May 27 for her role in “About Dry Grasses,” the latest film from festival favorite, Türkiye’s acclaimed director Nuri Bilge Ceylan.

Dizdar said she played “someone who is fighting for her life and she has overcome a lot of difficulties.”

The character I portray in the film is someone who is fighting for her life and she’s overcome a lot of difficulties. Under normal circumstances, I would have had to work hard on this character,” said Dizdar.

“I understand what it’s like to be a woman in this area of the country,” she continued. “I would like to dedicate this prize to all the women who are fighting to exist and overcome difficulties in this world and to retrain hope.

In “About Dry Grasses” she plays a former activist rebuilding her life after having her leg amputated from a bombing.

She captures the interests of two village schoolteachers, and challenges their cynicism with her own dedication to political activism, in Ceylan’s trademark powerful dialogue.

The film focuses on a dejected schoolteacher frustrated with his life in a remote Anatolian village.

Shot in Ceylan’s visually arresting style, it looks at teacher-pupil relations and the roots of political engagement.

The 36-year-old Dizdar has been starring in films and television since the early 2010s after studying acting and starting out in theater.

Her roles have included some popular TV series in Türkiye including “Wounded Love.”

Ceylan previously won the Palme d’Or for “Winter Sleep,” among multiple awards he has received over the years at the Cannes Film Festival.

‘Anatomy of a Fall’ wins Pame d’Or

Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall,” a twisty French Alps courtroom drama, won the festival’s prestigious top prize Palme d’Or at the festival.

“Anatomy of a Fall,” which stars Sandra Hüller as a writer trying to prove her innocence in her husband’s death, is only the third film directed by a woman to win the Palme d’Or. One of the two previous winners, Julia Ducournau, was on this year’s jury.

Cannes’ Grand Prix, its second prize, went to Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest,” a chilling Martin Amis adaptation about a German family living next door to Auschwitz.

The awards were decided by a jury presided over by two-time Palme winner Ruben Östlund, the Swedish director who won the prize last year for “Triangle of Sadness.” The ceremony preceded the festival’s closing night film, the Pixar animation “Elemental.”

The jury prize went to Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki’s “Fallen Leaves,” a deadpan love story about a romance that blooms in a loveless workaday world where dispatches from the war in Ukraine regularly play on the radio.

Best actor went to veteran Japanese star Koji Yakusho, who plays a reflective, middle-aged Tokyo man who cleans toilets in Wim Wenders’ “Perfect Days.” Wenders’ film is a gentle, quotidian character study.

Vietnamese-French director Tràn Anh Hùng took best director for “Pot-au-Feu,” a lush, foodie love story starring Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel and set in a 19th century French gourmet château.

Best screenplay was won by Yuji Sakamoto for “Monster.” Sakamoto penned Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s nuanced drama, with shifting perspectives, about two boys struggling for acceptance in their school at home.

Quentin Tarantino, who won Cannes’ top award for “Pulp Fiction,” attended the ceremony to present a tribute to filmmaker Roger Corman. Tarantino praised Corman for filling him and countless moviegoers with “unadulterated cinema pleasure.”

“My cinema is uninhibited, full of excess and fun,” said Corman, the independent film maverick. “I feel like this what Cannes is about.”

The festival’s Un Certain Regard section handed out its awards on Friday, giving the top prize to Molly Manning Walker’s debut feature, “How to Have Sex.”

Saturday’s ceremony drew to close a Cannes edition that hasn’t lacked spectacle, stars or controversy.

The biggest wattage premieres came out of competition. Martin Scorsese debuted his Osage murders epic “Killers of the Flower Moon,” a sprawling vision of American exploitation with Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone.

“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” Harrison Ford’s Indy farewell, launched with a tribute to Ford. Wes
Anderson premiered “Asteroid City.”

The festival opened on a note of controversy. “Jeanne du Barry,” a period drama co-starring Johnny Depp as Louis XV, played as the opening night film. The premiere marked Depp’s highest profile appearance since the conclusion of his explosive trial last year with ex-wife Amber Heard.

The selection of “Jeanne du Barry” added to criticisms of Cannes for being too hospitable to men accused of abusive behavior.