MUMBAI: Michael Haneke won the top prize for his stark film about love and death Amour. The Austrian director‘s powerful and understated film stars two acting icons from France – 85-year-old Emmanuelle Riva and 81-year-old Jean-Louis Trintignant. They play an elderly couple coping with the wife‘s worsening health.
"I experienced something in my family that touched me." He thanked his wife and – in a rare personal comment – said he had promised her "we would never leave each other, like in the film," Haneke has been quoted to have said. The director said his reputation for delivering shocks was unjust.
Over the years, 10 films of Haneke has made it to the Cannes including Funny Games and Hidden. He previously won the Palme in 2009 for The White Ribbon and is only the seventh director to take the top prize twice.
While the second Grand Prize went to Matteo Garrone‘s Italian satire Reality, Ken Loach‘s The Angels‘ Share won the Jury Prize. Incidentally, both have won awards at the Cannes earlier – Garrone took the Grand Prize for Gomorrah in 2008 while Loach won the Palme d‘Or for The Wind That Shakes the Barley in 2006.
Mexico‘s Carlos Reygadas was named best director for Post Tenebras Lux.
The best actor prize went to Mads Mikkelsen for The Hunt, while the best actress award was won jointly by Cristina Flutur and Cosmina Stratan, as friends separated by faith in the Romanian film Beyond the Hills.
The prize winners were chosen from among 22 contenders by a jury, led by Italian director Nanni Moretti, that included actors Ewan McGregor and Diane Kruger, director Alexander Payne and fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier.
