The Palme d’Or awarded to Iranian Jafar Panahi

The 78th Cannes Film Festival will remain like a very good vintage. Half of the 22 films in official competition presented a world on the verge of collapse in which certainties vacillate, but where some salutary lights persist. A real load against the mullahs regime, the film by Jafar Panahi, presented in the second week, marked the festival -goers.

After several years in prison in his country and fourteen years of prohibition to leave the territory, the great Iranian filmmaker, author of a work created in hiding, was able to go to Cannes to present his film, which features former political detainees crossing the road to their executioner. Will they give in to the spirit of revenge in the face of their former torturer and do justice themselves? The characters in this drama question the good attitude to adopt – and the spectators with them.

A resolutely political record

Two other Iranians, Sepideh Farsi and Saeed Roustaee, participated in the competition. Like them, directors from nations where authoritarian regimes attack freedom of expression, have found, this year again, a large echo chamber in Cannes. Rewarded with the male interpretation prize and by the staging prize, “the secret agent”, of the Brazilian Kleber Mendonça Fihlo, is a feature film evoking the military dictatorship of the 1970s.

The question of power and its abuses is addressed. The gold camera, which rewards the best first film, was awarded to the Iraqi Hasan Hadi for “The President’s Cake”, a film telling the preparation, by a little girl, of a birthday cake intended for Saddam Hussein. Rewards which are added to the Palme d’Or for a resolutely political track record.