Cannes got it wrong this year by awarding Cristian Mungiu's very moderate Fjord Palme d'Or

Hollywood performers and international filmmakers appeared, but many accepted laureates and auteurs delivered only moderate work. Fjord, the Palme d’Or winner by Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, uses a big Hollywood name through Sebastian Stan as a grumpy, religious Romanian IT engineer. The film focuses on painful cultural differences within Europe, including liberal-interventionist Norway involving itself in private family affairs and the clash between fundamentalist Christian faith and a secular-humanist environment. The procedural style resembles the director’s earlier work, but it does not illuminate compelling truths and feels like a co-production contrivance. Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur stands out as a clear-sighted, magnificently acted and shot political parable. Valeska Grisebach’s The Dreamed Advent receives a jury prize.

"Fjord is, in fact, a perfect example of an established European star director using a big Hollywood name: Sebastian Stan, playing a grumpy and religious Romanian IT engineer, his hair shaved into dull male pattern baldness for the part, and photographed largely in austere longshot. The point of Fjord is arguably to focus on a very valid theme that Mungiu has explored before: the painful cultural differences within Europe, something we may naively consider to be a unitary EU bloc."

"In the film we see liberal-interventionist Norway getting involved in private family affairs in a way that might not happen in Romania, and the two main characters' fundamentalist Christian faith is held against them in this secular-humanist environment. Fjord has the director's procedural mannerisms but here they do not do real work in illuminating any very interesting truth; Fjord feels like a coproduction contrivance, but certainly one that impressed this jury."

"Andrey Zvyagintsev's Minotaur, his stunning Russian parable of Putinesque violence, denial and delusion, was my pick for the Palme substantial, clear-sighted, magnificently acted and shot. The personal is fused with the political in a thrilling way and it has at least won the runner-up Grand Prix."

"These were the prizes for a Cannes under pressure. The Hollywood A-listers and big-hitters were A-listing and big-hitting at home this year. And what about the international heavyweights from Europe and Asia that highbrow festivaliers are always saying are loads better than the Americans anyway? Well, many of those only showed up in the physical sense."

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