Cannes Film Festival: The Square wins Palme d'Or

Dominic West has an encounter with Terry Notary, playing a performance artist, in The Square

Art world satire The Square, directed by Ruben Ostlund, has won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

The Swedish title was one of 19 films competing for the prestigious Palme d'Or, in the 70th year of the festival on the French Riviera.

Left to right: Claes Bang, Elisabeth Moss, Ruben Ostlund, Dominic West and Terry Notary

Prizes also went to British filmmaker Lynne Ramsay and director Sofia Coppola. But juror Jessica Chastain said she was shocked at the way many of the films she saw at Cannes portrayed women.

• What did the critics say?

Chastain, star of The Help said it was "disturbing" to see the way women were depicted on screen, saying: "The one thing I really took away from this experience was how the world views women.

There are some exceptions, but for the most part I was surprised with the representation of female characters on the screen in these films.

"I hope when we include more female story-tellers we will have more of the women that I recognise in my day-to-day life, ones that are proactive, have their own agency and don't just react to the men around them - they have their own point of view."

Toni Erdmann director Maren Ade, who also sat on the jury, agreed more female directors were needed, adding: "We're missing a lot of stories they might tell."

Cannes: The winners

Palme d'Or: The Square
Grand Prix: BPM (Beats per Minute)
Jury prize: Andrey Zvyagintsev, Loveless
70th anniversary award: Nicole Kidman
Best director: Sofia Coppola, The Beguiled
Best actress: Diane Kruger, In the Fade
Best actor: Joaquin Phoenix, You Were Never Really Here
Best screenplay: Joint winners Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthymis Filippou for The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and Lynne Ramsay for You Were Never Really Here
Camera d'Or (best debut film): Leonor Serraille, Jeune Femme
Short film prize: A Gentle Night, Qiu Yang


Spanish director Pedro Almodovar, who chaired the jury, said the winning film was a rich and "completely contemporary" tale about "the dictatorship of being politically correct".

The director of Julieta and All About My Mother said the festival was "the birth of a lot of wonderful movies" and that he had been "completely mesmerised" by some of the films in competition.