Ken Loach won the Palme d'Or, the top prize at Cannes, on Sunday night with his moving drama I, Daniel Blake, which deals with the shame of poverty in austerity-hit Europe.
The award – Loach’s second Palme d’Or in a decade – marked a major upset at the world’s top film festival.
Loach – who turns 80 next month and is known for shining a light on the downtrodden in society and his left-wing politics – beat runaway favourites including the rapturously well-received German comedy Toni Erdmann by Maren Ade, one of three female directors in competition, and Paterson, starring Adam Driver as a poetry-writing bus driver, by US indie legend Jim Jarmusch. Both films left empty-handed.
Loach joins an elite club of two-time victors at the festival, including Francis Ford Coppola and Serbian director Emir Kusturica.
Loach slammed harsh welfare cuts across Europe as he accepted the prize.
“We are in the grip of a project of austerity driven by ideas that we call neoliberalism that brought us to near catastrophe,” he said. “It has led to billions of people in serious hardship and many millions struggling, from Greece in the east to Spain in the west … while this has brought a tiny few immense wealth.”
The runner-up Grand Prix award went to Canada's Xavier Dolan, 27, for his hot-tempered family drama It's Only the End of the World, which features a cast of A-list French stars – and has been widely panned by critics.
Fighting back tears, Dolan said he felt vindicated.
“The fight continues,” he said. “I will keep making films all my life whether they are loved or not.”
A British director also claimed the third-place Jury prize: Andrea Arnold for her high-energy American Honey, starring Shia LaBeouf in a tale of vagrant US youths selling magazines door-to-door.
All three of the top winners were a surprise to many of the film critics at the festival.
"The jury managed to blindside virtually every punter with their choice of winner," wrote trade magazine Variety.
French film magazine Cahiers du Cinema was more blunt, tweeting that it had been a "lovely competition ruined by a blind jury".
The best director prize was shared by Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu for his drama Graduation, about the moral rot of corruption in a post-communist society, and Olivier Assayas, from France, for his supernatural thriller Personal Shopper, featuring Hollywood star Kristen Stewart.
Philippine star Jaclyn Jose won best actress in Brillante Mendoza's Ma' Rosa as a mother selling drugs to survive who falls prey to corrupt police.
“She broke my heart,” said one of the jury members, French director Arnaud Desplechin, justifying the choice in what was widely seen as a vintage year for female performances.
Iran's Shahab Hosseini clinched the best actor gong for his role in Asghar Farhadi's taut moral drama The Salesman, about a married couple thrown into turmoil after the wife is attacked in their home.
Farhadi, whose 2011's A Separation won the best foreign language film Oscar, also scooped the screenplay honours.
Houda Benyamina's Divines about a French teenage girl from a tough immigrant suburb got the nod for best first film, the Camera d'Or.
The nine-member jury was led by Mad Max director George Miller, who called the 12-day festival "one of the most intense experiences of my life".
Loach previously won Cannes' top prize in 2006 for The Wind That Shakes the Barley, a drama about the war of independence in Ireland and the effect it had on friends and families who found themselves on opposing sides.
I, Daniel Blake moved many viewers to tears at Cannes but drew mixed reviews from critics.
It tells of a carpenter’s Kafkaesque struggle to get financial help from the state after suffering a heart attack and being told by doctors he can no longer work.
He finds himself trapped when an invisible, oft-cited “decision-maker” rules he is too healthy to receive benefits.
He befriends a young single mother of two who is penalised for being late to an appointment at the benefits centre, leaving her with no money for food.
“The most vulnerable people are told their poverty is their own fault,” Loach said at the festival.
Variety called the film "a drama of tender devastation ... and scalding and moving relevance. It's about something so much larger than bureaucratic cruelty ... it captures a world – our world – in which the opportunity to thrive, or even just survive, is shrinking by the minute".
Twenty-one films were in contention for the Palme d’Or, which can provide a huge global distribution boost for its winner.
artslife@thenational.ae
