It was Un Certain Regard, the second most prestigious section at the Cannes Film Festival, that brought arguably the event’s biggest surprise hit this year. Jordan Firstman’s directorial debut “Club Kid,” which played to thunderous applause on the first Friday of the festival, was acquired by a whopping $17 million by A24 after a multiple-bidder race that remains the biggest sell of the festival so far.
The wide acclaim for a film Variety chief film critic Guy Lodge called a “sweet, surprisingly old-fashioned heartwarmer,” however, did not translate into awards, with Firstman going home with full pockets but empty hands.
The big winner of the night was Sandra Wollner’s “Everytime,” a gripping tale on grief told through a tragedy uniting a mother, daughter and teenage boy. The Austrian director took to the stage to thank her team of contributors, many fellow writers and directors themselves, and to tell the audience she would like to “hold on to those quirky and weird thoughts” that creatives often tend to ignore in their initial senselessness, but that “hopefully stay with you a little longer.”
Other winners included Abinash Bikram Shah’s “Elephants in the Fog,” the first Nepali film in Cannes Un Certain Regard, and Louis Clichy’s “Iron Boy,” a hand-painted animated feature acquired earlier in the week by Sony Pictures Classics for North and Latin America, India and Southeast Asian TV. Variety critic Siddhant Adlakha, which reviewed both winners, called Bikram Shah’s tale on the “transactional nature of trans acceptance in South Asia” a “a potent tale of loss, loneliness and desperation” and Clichy’s childhood drama “both visually dazzling and deeply personal.”
The “Elephants in the Fog” team brought a party to the stage when dozens of the film’s contributors began dancing around Cannes director Thierry Frémaux. Visibly moved, director Bikram Shah told the audience that “cinema has a power to look into the shadows.” “By bringing our story [to the festival] and recognizing it with this award,” he told the jury, “you have made the invisible visible.”
Elephants in the Fog
Courtesy of UTN, Les Valseurs, DGS
Performance-wise, the UCR jury awarded the female trio at the centre of Valentina Maurel’s “Forever Your Maternal Animal” — Daniela Marín Navarro, Marina de Tavira and Mariangel Villegas — and Bradley Fiomona Dembeasset’s breakout turn in Rafiki Fariala’s “Congo Boy.” A bundle of energy, Fiomona Dembeasset roused the audience at the Debussy screening room by finishing his impassioned acceptance speech, delivered in song, with a powerful declaration: “I am a young Congolese! I am a refugee! I am a star!”
This year’s Un Certain Regard jury was presided over by French actress Leila Bekhti, who first rose to prominence through Jacques Audiard’s Cannes Grand Prize-winning “A Prophet”. Bekthi was joined by French director Thomas Cailley, whose “Animal Kingdom” opened UCR in 2023, plus Senegalese producer Angele Diabang, Italian director Laura Samani, and Lebanese composer Khaled Mouzanar.
Full list of winners:
Prix Un Certain Regard: “Everytime,” by Sandra Wollner
Jury Prize: “Elephants in the Fog,” by Abinash Bikram Shah
Special Jury Prize: “Iron Boy,” directed by Louis Clichy
Best Actress: Daniela Marín Navarro, Marina de Tavira and Mariangel Villegas for “Forever Your Maternal Animal”
Best Actor: Bradley Fiomona Dembeasset for “Congo Boy”
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