BONG JOON-HO'S 'PARASITE' WINS THE PALME D'OR

Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho has won the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or tonight with PARASITE, a powerful dramedy about the collision of two families from very different socio-economic classes that leads all of them to become entangled in an unexpected incident. The win marks Bong’s first major prize in Cannes. 

In his remarks onstage tonight inside the Lumière, Bong noted to the French audience that one of his inspirations has been Claude Chabrol. It was a "unanimous" decision to award the top prize of the film festival to PARASITE, said Jury President Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu. 

Antonio Banderas won the best actor award for his role in PAIN & GLORY. In a reteaming with director Pedro Almodóvar, Banderas plays a Spanish film director past his professional peak and in the middle of a creative crisis, battling addiction among other physical and mental ailments. 

Banderas said on stage, “You have no idea how much I’d like to be able to speak French and at the same time I want to speak Spanish so I’m going to try to do a paella of both… When I walked up the red carpet I was asked how much time it took me to get here… it took 40 years.” He added, “There is no mystery” that the character he plays is Almodovar who he met 40 years ago. “We did eight films together. I respect him, I love him. He is my mentor. He gave me so much that this prize is dedicated to him.” Banderas concluded with, “There is pain and glory but the best is yet to come.”

Brit Emily Beecham won the best actress award for LITTLE JOE for her turn as Alice, a scientist who creates a genetically modified plant that seemingly causes uncanny changes in other living creatures. And the Jury Prize wound up in a tie for Ladj Ly's LES MISERABLES (about life in the French projects) and Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles' BACARAU, a paranormal Western from Brazil. 

The full list of winners are as follows:

Palme d’Or
Parasite, dir: Bong Joon-ho

Grand Prize
Atlantics, dir: Mati Diop

Best Actor
Antonio Banderas; Pain And Glory

Jury Prize (TIE)
Les Misérables, dir: Ladj Ly
Bacurau, dirs: Kleber Mendonça Filho, Juliano Dornelles

Best Director(s)
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, The Young Ahmed

Best Actress
Emily Beecham, Little Joe

Best Screenplay
Céline Sciamma, Portrait Of A Lady On Fire

Special Mention
It Must Be Heaven, dir: Elia Suleiman

Camera d’Or
Our Mothers, dir: Cesar Diaz

Short Film Palme d’Or
The Distance Between Us And The Sky, dir: Vasilis Kekatos
Special Mention: Monster God, dir: Agustina San Martin