Cannes 2017: Ruben Östlund's The Square wins the Palme d'Or – as it happened

That's yer lot

Right, Cannes is over bar the shouting so I’m off. Head over to Guardian film shortly for Peter Bradshaw’s take on this year’s winners and for a gallery of the best red-carpet action. And congratulations to Mr Östlund and The Square. Au revoir!

What happened to Netflix?

Netflix hogged many of the headlines at Cannes, but left the Croisette empty-handed, with neither Okja or The Meyerowitz Stories picking up a major award. That perhaps unsurprising, given that Pedro Almodovar was very critical of the streaming giant at the festival’s opening press conference.

It will be interesting to see whether Netflix bothers turning up next year; Cannes have changed the rules for 2018 onward, meaning that a film has to have a release in French cinemas for competition, and Netflix are enormously resistant to French theatrical releases. Here’s a bit more info on the spat:

Another element to consider in regard to The Square’s win: Elisabeth Moss is having one hell of a year. She’s currently starring in The Handmaid’s Tale (starting right now on Channel 4!), and has another series of Top of the Lake coming out later this year. I got to watch some of the latter at Cannes this week, and loved it:

As for Will Smith, he “absolutely loves” Jupiter’s Moon, Kornél Mundruczó’s fantastical allegory about a refugee who can fly.

“I thought it was fantastic. I will watch it again and again.”

“Sometimes democracy sucks”, he adds when someone asks why it didn’t win a prize.

Pedro gets emotional while talking about 120 Beats Per Minute and the importance of LGBT filmmaking, and gets a round of applause in response. “I can’t love it more”, he says of the film. I suspect it was his choice for the Palme.

Here’s the Guardian’s news story on The Square’s surprise victory:

I think it was a pretty great choice for the Palme, on reflection. Daring, unsettling and irreverent, which is a quality that you can’t really attribute to the past couple of winners.

“A couple of black folks won’t hurt things next year”, adds Will Smith. He’s completely right – this was a lineup almost entirely lacking in minority voices.

Jessica Chastain says that it was “disturbing” to see how female characters were depicted in the films in the Official Selection. She says that we need female storytellers to create more authentic female characters.

In a recent interview with the Guardian Chastain lamented the lack not only of female directors in the industry, but of female critics.

The jury is asked whether the process was easy or not.

“It was relatively easy. I was just trying to get Pedro to stop offering me sexual favours for my vote,” says Will Smith, who is clearly trying to out-Sutherland Sutherland here.

The Jury press conference is just about to get underway. We’ll hear from all eight jury members, plus president Pedro Almodovar.

Last year’s Jury press conference was notable for a deeply odd performance from Donald Sutherland. I’m hoping for similar here, ideally from Will Smith.

The failure of Lynne Ramsay or Sofia Coppola to win the top prize means that Jane Campion remains the only female director to win the Palme in the 70 years of the festival.

Campion addressed the issue in an interview with Vulture earlier this week, and let’s just say she didn’t mince her words:

“Too long! Twenty-four years! And before that, there was no one. It’s insane. And I’m really annoyed that the director-ess from Toni Erdmann didn’t win last time. I thought, ‘Finally, a buddy’. No. No! There’s no more guys winning. That’s it. It’s just going to be women winning from now on.”

Here’s what Twitter’s great and good are saying about The Square on Twitter. General consensus seems to be that it was a decent enough choice for the top prize, but could have done with a bit of a trim (it is rather long at two hours and 20 minutes):

Here’s what Peter Bradshaw made of The Square:

Östlund may have been inspired by Roy Andersson or maybe Lars Von Trier. There is a drop of Buñuel there too – but Östlund’s own signature is plain. This is high wire cinema.

Ruben Östlund’s acerbic satire of the art world wins the big prize. It’s a gloriously odd and very funny film, but I must admit I didn’t see it winning the Palme.

The Palme d'Or goes to...

The Square!!!!

Kidman, who has appeared in no less than three films and a TV show in Cannes, has already headed home, so Will Smith is jokingly accepting the award on his behalf.

Oh, no she’s pre-recorded a message, on what looks like a cameraphone. She’s gutted not to be there, etc etc