At 61, Demi Moore Triumphs at 2024 Cannes Film Festival

Three people shared the best actress award, in the same film

The jury prize went to Emilia Pérez, by Jacques Audiard, 72, about a Mexican cartel leader (Karla Sofia Gascon, 52) who hires a woman (Zoe Saldana) to help him fake his own death and change his sex — without his wife (Selena Gomez) finding out. All three actors shared the Cannes best actress award. Juror Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon) hailed the “harmony of sisterhood” in the film. It’s also partly a musical and sounds too weird for mainstream audiences — but it’s headed to Netflix, likely this year, accompanied by an Oscar campaign.

(Left to right) Divya Prabha, Payal Kapadia, Chhaya Kadam and Kani Kusruti pose with the Grand Prix Award for "All We Imagine as Light" at the 77th Cannes Film Festival at Palais des Festivals on May 25, 2024 in Cannes, France.

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An intergenerational film from India took the second-highest honors

Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light (expected to be released this year in the U.S.) took the Grand Prix with a tale of two love-troubled young Mumbai nurses (Kani Kusruti and Divya Prabha) who bond with a retired widow (Chhaya Kadam). Kadam, who does not reveal her age, wore her mother’s sari to the premiere, a triumph since it’s India’s first film to compete in the main category at Cannes in 30 years. Her mother died just before the festival. “I started earning quite late,” Kadam told The Hindu newspaper. “Everything got delayed. I felt like I should wear my mother’s sari because she would have worn that at Cannes.”

(Left to right) Sebastian Stan, Ali Abbasi and Maria Bakalova attend "The Apprentice" after-party during the 77th Cannes Film Festival on May 20, 2024 in Cannes, France.

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A Donald Trump biopic earned good reviews — and furious legal action

The Apprentice, which chronicles the early career of Trump, 77, before his The Apprentice TV show days, won no awards, but Succession’s Jeremy Strong got raves as Trump’s ruthless mentor Roy Cohn. Sebastian Stan plays Trump. The film was upstaged by a cease-and-desist letter from Trump’s lawyers. “This ‘film’ is pure malicious defamation, should not see the light of day, and doesn’t even deserve a place in the straight-to-DVD section of a bargain bin at a soon-to-be-closed discount movie store, it belongs in a dumpster fire,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement. Director Ali Abbasi, who offered to screen the film privately for Trump, told reporters at Cannes, “Everybody talks about him suing a lot of people — they don’t talk about his success rate though, you know?” The most controversial scene depicts a disturbing sexual encounter between Trump and first wife Ivana (the talented Maria Bakalova). Ivana Trump alleged this event in her divorce proceedings. She later said, “As a woman, I felt violated, as the love and tenderness, which he normally exhibited towards me, was absent. I referred to this as a ‘rape,’ but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense.”

The film’s fate looks to be up in the air. “We have a promotional event coming up called [the] U.S. election,” Abbasi said. “If I’m remembering right, the second debate’s going to be on Sept. 15 [between Trump and President Joe Biden], something like that. So that’s a good release date for us, I would say.”

The director of Poor Things premiered a movie said to be even stranger

In Kinds of Kindness (in theaters June 21), the latest film by surrealist director Yorgos Lanthimos, 50 (Poor Things, The Favourite), Jesse Plemons plays roles in three different stories, as a businessman oppressed by his cruel boss (Willem Dafoe, 68), a policeman who doesn’t believe his wife (Poor Things star and Oscar winner Emma Stone) is really his wife, and a member of a bizarre cult (led by Dafoe). Reviewers were mostly positive, partly because Lanthimos is a revered six-time Oscar nominee and Plemons reportedly pulled off a triple crown of acting.

Mohammad Rasoulof departs the "The Seed of the Sacred Fig" red carpet at the 77th annual Cannes Film Festival at Palais des Festivals on May 24, 2024 in Cannes, France.

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The most inspiring winner risked his life to get to Cannes

Director Mohammad Rasoulof, 52, won a special jury prize for the three-hour The Seed of the Sacred Fig (to be released this year in the U.S.). Its tale of two daughters whose friend gets shot in the face by police at a demonstration against Iran’s anti-woman rulers, while their judge father condemns protesters to death, earned a perfect 100 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes — and brought an eight-year prison sentence with a whipping for Rasoulof from Iran’s enraged authorities. He escaped from Iran on foot over mountains, went into hiding abroad and showed up at Cannes. He was greeted with a 12-minute standing ovation.