Justine Triet, a French film director, used her Palme d'Or acceptance speech at the Cannes Film Festival to criticize President Emmanuel Macron’s “shocking” repression of pension reform protests in France. The filmmaker, who won the prestigious award for her movie “The Anatomy of a Chute,” referred to the strong protests that have drawn significant attention in France this year. According to Triet, these protests have been “denied and repressed in a shocking way” by the French government.
Triet argued that an “increasingly uninhibited” power pattern is emerging in various sectors of French society, including the film industry. She further suggested that this trend is connected to the commodification of culture, which the French government is promoting, and that it is gradually undermining the French cultural exception. Triet received the Palme d'Or from actress Jane Fonda, who joined her on stage.
The director called for more opportunities and support to be given to new filmmakers, such as the room she was given when she started making movies 15 years ago. Triet's award-winning film is about a woman suspected of murdering her husband and beat competition from other notable films such as Wes Anderson’s “Asteroid City.”
However, Triet’s speech has sparked criticism from some quarters, including French Culture Minister Rima Abdul Malak, who was present at the closing ceremony. In a tweet, Malak said that Triet’s speech was unfair, given that the film could not have been made without the French model of film financing, which allows unique diversity in the industry.
The mayor of Cannes, David Lisnard, also took to Twitter to criticize Triet’s speech, describing the director as a “spoiled child” and calling her speech as conformist and political. Despite these criticisms, Triet's Palme d'Or win adds her name to a select group of women who have previously won the prize, including New Zealand’s Jane Campion and France’s Julia Ducournau.
This year's Cannes Film Festival has taken place amidst social unrest in France, with trade unions announcing 100 days of action and anger to coincide with the event. Fears that the protests and electricity outages could impact festival events prompted the authorities to ban all protests outside the Palais de Festival in Cannes. Despite this, the festival went ahead relatively smoothly, and Triet's speech has added a political edge to an already charged climate.