Qingchun
I don’t really think awards are that important, but here goes my wildest guessing:
Qingchun (2023) is elected into Main Competition in the Cannes Festival this year. It has been 4 years since the last Chinese film, Nanfang chezhan de juhui (2019), was elected. Before that, there is only Chinese film that won the Palme d’Or, which is Ba wang bie ji (1993), directed by Kaige Chen, 30 years ago.
Although the real reason may need another Frémaux’s diary to reveal, here are some external reasons for which it might won the Palme d’Or. I haven’t watched the film so I have no idea what are the internal reasons.
The director’s film have entered the Cannes Festival before, although in the middle he went to the Venice Film Festival and Berlin International Film Festival.
Based on the previous films of this year’s chair man Ruben, he always cares about social problems and class differentiation and all that. And you know what, so does Ken Loach. And this tweet by Patrick Heidmann definitely triggered him:
Best moment in my interview with Ken Loach just now at #Cannes2023 was him very seriously asking:
Ruben Östlund? Who’s that?
The documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022) won the Golden Lion in Venice Film Festival. The documentary Sur l’Adamant (2023) won the Golden Berlin Bear in Berlin International Film Festival. It would make a great story if documentaries got the Big Three in a roll.
This year’s Palme d’Or goes to Anatomie d’une chute (2023), directed by Justine Triet. It is only the 4th full-length film directed by her. Congrats! By the way, the other competitors who are about the same age are Alice Rohrwacher (5th full-length film) and Ramata-Toulaye Sy (1st full-length film). The rest of whom are mostly born in the 60s and 70s. Marco Bellocchio is born in 1939, when WWII just started.