Park Chan-wook had a line ready. Asked at the post-ceremony press conference why his jury gave the Palme d’Or to Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord, the jury president wittily dodged the question: “I didn’t want to award the Palme d’Or to any of the films, because it’s an award that I myself have never gotten. But I had no other choice.” It was a nod to his last film, No Other Choice, The Hollywood Reporter notes.
Fjord, Mungiu’s English-language debut, stars Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve as a Romanian religious couple who move to a Norwegian village and find themselves accused of child abuse. It makes Mungiu the tenth director to win the Palme twice, 19 years after 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, per Variety. It is also the seventh consecutive Palme for its U.S. distributor, Neon, a streak that began with Parasite in 2019.
Mungiu accepted with typical modesty, per Variety:
All awards are contextual
Cristian Mungiu, Variety
Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur, which many expected to win, took the Grand Prix, and the Russian director used his speech to address Vladimir Putin directly: “Put an end to this slaughter. The whole world is waiting for this.” Valeska Grisebach’s The Dreamed Adventure won the Jury Prize.
The youth and music corner
The night’s most emotional moments came from Spain. Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, known as Los Javis, tied with Paweł Pawlikowski (Fatherland) for Best Director for La Bola Negra (The Black Ball), a García Lorca-inspired queer musical drama spanning eras with Penélope Cruz and Glenn Close, per THR. Variety quotes them dedicating the prize to those who came before:
The only way we can honor the suffering, the silence, the death of the LGBTQ people that came before us, is making sure that the next generation has the same freedom or more.
Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, Variety
The film’s cast also features the singer Guitarricadelafuente, in his acting debut. Pawlikowski, joking about the three-person tie on stage, called it “a piece of disastrous mise-en-scène.”
Both acting awards went to pairs. Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto shared Best Actress for Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s All of a Sudden, and Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne shared Best Actor for Lukas Dhont’s First World War drama Coward. Emmanuel Marre won Best Screenplay for A Man of His Time, and Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo’s Ben’Imana won the Caméra d’Or, making her the first Rwandan director to compete at Cannes.
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Barbra Streisand, who could not attend with a knee injury, received an honorary Palme d’Or from Isabelle Huppert’s tribute and thanked the festival by video, recalling how foreign films shaped her. Peter Jackson had been honored on opening night.
Cannes has often proved a strong predictor for awards season, THR notes, and Neon’s run includes Anora, which went on to win Best Picture at the Oscars. Last year’s winner, Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident, also became an Oscar nominee.
- Palme d’Or
- *Fjord*, Cristian Mungiu
- Grand Prix
- *Minotaur*, Andrey Zvyagintsev
- Best Director (tie)
- Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, *La Bola Negra*; Paweł Pawlikowski, *Fatherland*
- Acting
- Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto (*All of a Sudden*); Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne (*Coward*)
Sources
Added to the High Grailed archive on October 12, 2026.
