As if the heat in Cannes wasn’t already unbearable, temperatures reached boiling point in the ICS headquarters this afternoon when all ballots by this year’s panelists were tabulated, culminating in the 2017 ICS Cannes Awards. As always, the ICS follows the same rules as the official jury, meaning the wealth is spread.
This year’s ICS Cannes Awards winners are….
Palme d’or
120 battements par minute
Grand Prix
Loveless
Prix du Jury
Good Time
Robin Campillo’s heartfelt drama about AIDS activism in Paris in the 1980s was the clear winner of the Palme, something that was already reflected on our critics’ panel. Andrey Zvyagintsev’s portrait of a broken marriage and the effects it has on a son took home the Grand Prix in a close fight with Good Time by Benny and Josh Safdie, about a one-night odyssey through the New York underbelly, with only one point separating them.
Best Director
Todd Haynes for Wonderstruck
Lynne Ramsay for You Were Never Really Here
This is where those pesky Cannes rules of not being able to combine prizes came into play. Two directors were scrapped, leading to a tie between Todd Haynes for a tale spanning two separate eras, and Lynne Ramsay for a barely finished, gritty tale about a lonely vigilante.
Best Actor
Robert Pattinson for Good Time
This was in reality a dead heat between Pattinson and Nahuel Pérez Biscayart for 120 battements par minute, but since you can’t combine a Palme d’or with any other prize, but you can do it with a Prix du Jury, the British heartthrob took the prize in a category where nobody else was even close to these two fine, but very different performances.
Best Actress
Kim Min-hee for The Day After
Special mention: Nicole Kidman for The Beguiled / The Killing of a Sacred Deer
Surprisingly, director Hong Sang-soo’s muse netted her second big prize of the year, after winning the Best Actress prize in Berlin, for her part as a young woman unwittingly involved in a love triangle she is not a part of.
Meanwhile, Australian screen legend Kidman combined scored the most points of all ladies, but vote splitting reared its ugly head. That’s what you get for being crowned queen of the festival…
Best Screenplay
Ruben Östlund for The Square
The Swedish master of the awkward fended off Hong Sang-soo’s The Day After for the win for his witty screenplay about political correctness and the privileged elite, with which he made the jump to competition for the first time.