This year's Cannes winners call for tolerance and empathy

Romanian director Cristian Mungiu won the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or top prize for the second time on Saturday (May 23) with his Norwegian-set drama that explores clashing cultures, "Fjord."

Winning an award at Cannes typically transforms careers and serves as a launch pad for the Oscars, with Palme d'Or winners often carrying strong awards season momentum.

"Fjord" stars Sebastian Stan, who made his name in the Captain America trilogy, as a Romanian IT specialist who decides to move his family of seven to the Norwegian village where his wife, played by "Sentimental Value" standout Renate Reinsve, was born.

Cultural differences on child-rearing take an extreme turn when child-protection services become involved, and the divisions reflect a bigger battle between conservative and progressive values.

Mungiu, who joins the small club of directors with two Palme d'Or prizes after winning in 2007 with "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," said his film was a plea for tolerance, inclusion and empathy.

"You need to double-check your beliefs every now and then and make sure that if somebody doesn't share the same views as you do, it doesn't mean that he's right or that you're right," he told Reuters after the ceremony. 

Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev, who has lived in exile in France since a life-threatening case of COVID-19 during the pandemic, used his speech while accepting the second-place Grand Prix for "Minotaur" to call on Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine.

"I simply couldn't not say it," he told Reuters, referring to the prominence of Cannes as a platform. 

The female leads of Ryusuke Hamaguchi's touching elder-care drama "All of a Sudden," France's Virginie Efira and Japan's Tao Okamoto, shared the best actress award. 

Valentin Campagne and newcomer Emmanuel Macchia also jointly received the best actor prize for their roles as World War One soldiers who fall in love in Belgian entry "Coward."

Macchia, who was scouted by director Lukas Dhont at a Belgian agricultural school, said he hoped the film would inspire younger audiences "to love themselves".

The best director prize was shared between Poland's Pawel Pawlikowski for his Thomas Mann drama "Fatherland" and the Spanish duo known as "Los Javis," Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, for the Spanish Civil War epic "The Black Ball."

The jury prize went to "The Dreamed Adventure," a drama about an archaeological dig in Bulgaria, by German film director Valeska Grisebach.

 Production: Fedja Grulovic, Hanna Rantala/Reuters